Tracking days for your spouse and children: whose count is whose
Every adult in a family is counted on their own days. Being married to a Canadian doesn’t make anyone a citizen: a spouse has to meet the same requirements as any other adult, which means 1,095 days in Canada in their own five years, and each adult files their own application. Children are different: whether a child needs days at all depends on how they apply.
Checked against IRCC’s pages on 25 October 2026. Sources: Canadian citizenship: who can apply, Canadian citizenship: how to apply, Guide 5445: applying for a permanent resident card.
Adults: each person’s own count
- Each adult applies separately, with their own application and signs their own. A family can file as a group online, but adults can’t open each other’s applications.
- Each person’s five years end on the day they sign, so two spouses who sign on different days have different windows, and different trips fall inside them.
- A trip you took together is in both lists. The days away are the same, but each person’s count is their own: it also rests on their days before PR and the trips they took alone.
- Becoming a PR on different dates changes the count too, because time before PR counts for half. The guide does time before PR count has it.
Children: two ways to apply
For a child under 18, which process applies depends on the child’s parents, and only one of the two asks for days.
- The child has a Canadian parent, or a parent applying at the same time (minor 5(2)). The requirements listed for it are permanent residence, the oath for ages 14 to 17, and no prohibition. Physical presence isn’t among them. The applicant is the child’s parent or legal guardian.
- The child has neither (minor 5(1)). The child needs enough physical presence, which is 1,095 days in the five years, and the applicant is whoever has custody or can legally act for them.
A child has an application of their own in both cases. The parent or guardian signs it, and a child aged 14 to 17 signs too. If you apply together, you can submit the family’s applications at once online, or put them in one envelope on paper so they are processed together.
A child’s PR card is a different form
If a child needs a PR card, it is an application of its own, at CA$50 a person. For an applicant under 18, IRCC asks for a copy of a birth certificate showing the parents, legal guardianship papers, or school records. Time abroad can count toward the 730 days in some cases, such as accompanying a Canadian citizen parent, and IRCC treats a PR under 22 as a child for that. The guide how long a PR can stay outside Canada says when.
Keeping a family’s days in one place
The calculator on this site counts one person at a time, for free. Use it once for each adult, with that person’s own dates and the day they expect to sign. See the citizenship calculator. It is an estimate, counted in your browser, and IRCC’s calculator is the one your application uses.
A household is part of the application pack. Everyone is counted in one place, side by side: your partner signs in with their own account to the same household and sees and changes the same people and trips, their own count among them. Children and parents are a name and their dates, and a trip you took together is entered once. It is CA$19 once for the household, with a 30-day refund. See what’s free and what the pack adds.
To see the same rules applied to real dates, read the citizenship date’s worked cases.