Count your days: what counts and what doesn't

The rule: 730 days in five years

To keep your PR status, you must have been in Canada for at least 730 days during the last five years. The days don't need to be in a row, and some time outside Canada can count towards them.¹

730 days is two years out of five. Put the other way round, which is how the PR Portal counts it: if your total time outside Canada is less than 1,095 days, you appear to meet the requirement.²

Which five years count

The count looks back from the day you apply. The portal asks for every absence in the past five years, or since you became a permanent resident if that was less than five years ago.²

If you have been a PR for less than five years, the law asks you to show that you will meet the obligation by the end of your first five years. If you have been a PR longer, you show that you have met it in the five years before the check.³

The window moves every day. A long trip from six years ago no longer counts against you; a trip you take next month will, for the next five years.

Day trips and partial days

You don’t count days abroad by the calendar pages you were away. Two rules from IRCC’s instructions do the work:

• The day you leave and the day you come back count as days in Canada. Only the full days in between are days outside.
• A same-day trip is not an absence. If you leave Canada and come back the same day, you don’t list it in the portal’s table at all.²

Rebuild your trip dates from your own records

Time abroad that counts as time in Canada

Some days outside Canada count as if you were here. The law lists them:³

• Accompanying a Canadian citizen who is your spouse or common-law partner, or your parent if you are their child.
• Working full time outside Canada for a Canadian business, or for the public service of Canada or of a province or territory, when you are assigned there as part of your job or contract.
• Accompanying a permanent resident who is your spouse, common-law partner or parent, and who is themselves working full time outside Canada for a Canadian business or public service.⁴

“Accompanying” means you normally live with them outside Canada. For the parent cases, a child is under 22 and not a spouse or common-law partner. A business that exists mainly so people can keep their status while living abroad is not a Canadian business for this rule.⁵

IMM 5644 Appendix A: the proof IRCC asks for situations A, B and C

What doesn't count

• Holidays, visits to family, and time spent caring for a relative abroad.
• Studying outside Canada.
• Working outside Canada for an employer that is not a Canadian business or public service.
• Time in Canada before the day you became a permanent resident.

The reason for a trip matters only when it is one of the three situations above. Every other day outside Canada is a day away, however short the trip or good the reason.³

Applying for citizenship? It uses a different count

If you're short of 730 days

Don’t round up and don’t leave trips out. When you consent in the application, IRCC can compare your list with border entry and exit records.

The law lets an officer keep someone’s status despite a shortfall when humanitarian and compassionate considerations justify it, taking into account the best interests of any child directly affected.³

Short of 730 days? Humanitarian and compassionate grounds