Worked cases · Time abroad that counts
Working abroad for a Canadian employer: does it count for the 730?
By this count, yes, if the job is the kind the law names: days outside Canada employed full time by a Canadian business or a Canadian public service count as days in Canada. A PR since 15 January 2020 posted to Singapore from 1 February 2022 to 1 August 2025 then has 1,826 days in the five years before a renewal on 2 November 2026.
Checked against the Government of Canada’s pages on 18 October 2026. Sources: Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, section 28, Guide 5445: applying for a permanent resident card, IRCC Help Centre: can my time abroad count toward my PR status?, Canadian citizenship: who can apply.
This case in the calculator
The calculator opens on this case’s dates, on the PR card — unless you kept your own dates in this browser, which it opens on instead. It can’t mark days abroad that count for the card, so it counts every such day as away, and its PR card figure is as things stand today; the answer above counts the case’s days on the dates it names. Change any date to make the count yours.
Keeping your PR status
550 days
in Canada in the last 5 years. 730 needed · 180 days short.
Becoming a citizen
31 July 2028
By this count, you reach 1,095 days in Canada then — 652 days from today.
180 days short.
More about these dates
By this count, you reach 1,095 days on 31 July 2028.
That is 652 days from today.
PR card: by this count you have 550 days in the last 5 years — 730 needed. It doesn’t hold.
180 days short.
Estimates. Confirm with IRCC’s physical presence calculator before you apply.
Keep counting with an account: these dates and trips go with you, and the count stays up to date.
This browser didn’t let the page keep your dates, so they can’t go with you. Make an account anyway and add them there.
These are example dates — replace them with yours.
The days left
Every day, five years
31 Jul 2023 – 30 Jul 2028 · 1,827 days
Every day from 31 July 2023 to 30 July 2028. 1 trip taken, 1,276 days away in all. By this count, the 1,095 days are there on 31 July 2028. Today is 18 October 2026. Singapore: 1 Feb 2022 to 1 Aug 2025, 1,276 days away.
Worked through
Counted as an ordinary absence — which is what the calculator on this page does, having no way to mark the job — the 1,276 days leave 550 in the window from 2 November 2021: 180 short of 730.
The PR card guide is precise about the job: you work for a Canadian business or public service and, as a term of the job, are assigned full time to a position outside Canada, and will keep working for that employer in Canada after the assignment. A job you found abroad yourself, even for a Canadian company’s local office, may not be that.
A spouse or partner with you on such an assignment can count the days too, as IRCC’s Help Centre sets out. Citizenship counts such days only for a Crown servant — the Canadian Armed Forces, the federal public administration or a province’s public service — and their family: with other employers they are days away.
What would change the answer
- If the work doesn’t fit, the days are absences, and the count is the shorter one the calculator shows: renewing after three years abroad works through when 730 comes back.
- With a Canadian-citizen spouse abroad, the days count without any job: time abroad with a citizen spouse.
Read next
- The rule behind it: How long can a PR stay outside Canada?
- More cases like this: Time abroad that counts for the PR card, or every worked case
- Your own dates: the PR card calculator