You can apply to renew your PR card once it has expired or is within nine months of expiring — not before. IRCC charges $50. The paperwork is simple, but renewal is also the moment IRCC checks whether you have met the 730-day residency obligation.
Our charges include applicable taxes. Disbursements are extra and billed at cost — itemized upfront, in writing, never hidden.
From $3,388.87 taxes included
The rule is nine months. If your card is still valid for longer than that, IRCC will return your application unless your legal name or gender identifier has changed. Filing early does not get you a card early — it costs you weeks.
The fee is $50 per person. You pay it online, print the receipt with the barcode, and include it. Applications are made on form IMM 5444 through the Permanent Residence Portal. Most new cards are valid for five years.
PR card applications are made from within Canada and cards are mailed to a Canadian address. If you are already abroad with an expired card, a renewal will not help you. You need a permanent resident travel document — also $50 — issued by a visa office before an airline will let you board.
An expired PR card does not make you an illegal resident. Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, you stop being a permanent resident only when you become a Canadian citizen, when a removal order comes into force, when there is a final determination that you failed the residency obligation, or when you apply to renounce your status and an officer approves it.
What an expired card actually costs you is travel. Airlines and marine carriers will not board a permanent resident without a valid card or travel document. Employers and provincial offices may also ask for it.
So the practical risk of letting it lapse is being stuck outside Canada, not being deported from inside it.
Section 28 of the Act requires 730 days of compliance in every five-year period. Physical presence in Canada is the obvious way. But days abroad also count if you were accompanying a Canadian citizen spouse, common-law partner or parent; if you were employed full time outside Canada by a Canadian business or the federal or a provincial public service; or if you were accompanying a permanent resident spouse or parent who held that kind of employment.
You disclose every absence in the application. That disclosure is the record an officer decides on, so a rushed or vague travel history is a real risk.
If you are short of 730 days, the officer can still allow you to keep status on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, taking into account the best interests of any child directly affected. That argument has to be made properly, with evidence, in the application itself.
Not on the strength of the expired card. You apply to a visa office for a permanent resident travel document, which costs $50 and is issued for a single trip. The officer assessing it also assesses your residency obligation. If the officer decides you failed the 730-day obligation, you have 60 days from receiving that written decision to appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division. Miss that deadline and the loss of status becomes final.
IRCC publishes a minimum of about three weeks and a current estimate that moves with volume. Real files run longer, especially where absences need verifying. Urgent processing exists for a narrow set of reasons and is never guaranteed. Do not book non-refundable travel around an application that has not been approved.
Our fee is $3,388.87, taxes included, published up front. It covers reviewing your eligibility, reconstructing and auditing your five-year travel history, deciding whether an exception or a humanitarian argument applies, preparing and submitting the application, and dealing with IRCC on your behalf until a decision. IRCC's $50 card fee and any biometrics fee are separate and paid directly to the government.
If you have lived in Canada continuously, nothing has changed and your travel history is easy to prove, no. Get advice when you are close to or under 730 days, when you are relying on the accompanying-spouse or Canadian-employer exception, when old absences are hard to document, when you have a criminal record or a prior misrepresentation issue, or when a previous application was returned or refused.
Open your file tonight — a licensed Ontario lawyer will confirm everything with you by tomorrow.