I plan to travel outside Canada. How do I avoid losing my permanent resident status?

You must meet your residency obligation to keep your status. This means that in any 5-year period, you must have at least 730 days in which you're either:

physically inside of Canada, or
outside of Canada but still meeting certain legal conditions.

730 days is the same as 2 years. Any day you are physically in Canada counts towards your obligation. The days do not have to be one after another. Even part of a day counts as a full day.

Days outside Canada

Sometimes, time you spend outside Canada can also count towards your obligation. You can count days when you:

accompanied your Canadian citizen , , or parent outside Canada
worked outside Canada full-time as an employee of a Canadian business or organization
worked outside Canada full-time as an employee of the government of Canada or a province
accompanied your permanent resident spouse, common-law partner, or parent who was working outside Canada full-time as an employee of a Canadian business or organization, or the government of Canada or a province

In the law, the word accompany usually means that you're sharing a household with the person outside Canada.

Time spent outside Canada accompanying a parent only counts if you were under age 22 and did not have a spouse or common-law partner.

And there are more rules about when time spent working outside Canada counts.

If you want to use time spent outside Canada to meet your , it's best to get legal advice.

Losing status

You do not lose your permanent resident status automatically. If you did not meet the residency obligation, you're still a permanent resident until a decision is made to take away your status and your appeal is refused. Or, if you do not appeal, you're a permanent resident until the deadline to appeal the decision passes.

Risk of cessation for protected persons

If you're a , you can lose both your protected person status and your permanent resident status if you do something that suggests that you no longer need protection.

Losing your protection this way is called cessation. Read more at Step 2.

Canadian Citizenship

Many permanent residents apply for Canadian citizenship as soon as they can. Canadian citizens:

do not lose their citizenship just because they spend time away from Canada
always have the right to return to Canada

For some people, there are reasons to wait or to not apply for citizenship at all.

Get legal advice

If your status might be at risk because of time spent outside Canada, get legal advice about:

if you could lose your status
if travelling outside Canada could cause you to lose your status
what you can do to protect your status and your right to stay in Canada

If you have been ordered to leave Canada, get legal help right away. You might be able to appeal the . The time limit to appeal is 30 days.