Guides

PR card renewal travel history (IMM 5444): what to list, with a template

To renew a PR card, the application (IMM 5444) asks you to list all your absences from Canada in the past 5 years, or since you became a permanent resident if that was less than five years ago, in a table on the form. IRCC uses it to check your residency obligation of 730 days in five years.

Checked against IRCC’s pages on 25 October 2026. Sources: Guide 5445: applying for a permanent resident card, Get, renew or replace a permanent resident card, Physical presence calculator: frequently asked questions, Record your trips outside Canada (travel journal), Canadian citizenship: who can apply.

What the form asks

• The table is on the IMM 5444 itself, in the Permanent Residence Portal. You start the renewal there, and the form’s own step-by-step instructions, under “Time Spent Outside Canada”, say how to fill it in.
• The period is the past five years, or the time since you became a PR when that is less. It is a different window from the one a citizenship application uses, which is the five years before you sign.
• You list absences, not days in Canada. A trip is a row, and IRCC’s calculator FAQ says to list every absence, even a same-day trip.
• You also send two pieces of evidence that you lived in Canada, such as pay stubs, bank statements or a rental agreement, as copies and not originals.
• If you spent fewer than 1,095 days outside Canada in those years, the supporting documents aren’t mandatory, but IRCC warns that leaving them out may affect how it assesses your residency obligation.

What IRCC’s page doesn’t say

IRCC’s guide for the card doesn’t say which fields each row of the table asks for, or how to count the days of a trip. Follow the form’s own table for the fields. For the days, the rule IRCC states is for its physical presence calculator: the day you leave and the day you come back count as days in Canada, so a trip from 1 to 15 July is 13 days away, and a same-day trip is 0 days. Where the form’s instructions say otherwise, they win.

A template to fill in first

Fill this in before you open the form, one row a trip, oldest first, then copy each row across. The columns are ours, not the form’s: they hold what any list of absences needs, and the form’s table may ask for more or less.

• Start from the past five years’ passport stamps, then check them against records such as bank statements and travel itineraries, which IRCC suggests for dates you don’t remember.
• Count only the days between leaving and coming back, as above, and add the column when you are done: it is your days away over the window.
• Make sure no two rows overlap, and that none falls outside the window.

You can also open the PR card calculator on a page of its own.

Keeping the list as you go

IRCC offers a travel journal for citizenship applications, with the day you left, the day you came back, the countries and the reason, and the same fields work for this list. Canada Days keeps the same list in your account, for free, and counts your 730 days from it, so the next renewal starts from a list instead of a search through your passport.

The layout is part of the application pack. For each person in your household, Canada Days lays the trips out for the PR card form (IMM 5444) over that form’s own five years, or since the PR date when that is nearer, with the days away worked out, to type from field by field. It is CA$19 once for the household, with a 30-day refund, and the count and the trip list stay free. See what’s free and what the pack adds. It is not an official record, and the form you submit is IRCC’s.

If your card has expired

An expired card doesn’t end your status, and you can renew it once it has expired. Outside Canada, you need a travel document to come back: the guide PR card expired outside Canada has it. For time abroad that might count toward the 730, see how long a PR can stay outside Canada.

To see the same rules applied to real dates, read the worked cases on the 730 days.