/ Published in 2016, Immigration, Operational Bulletins

Change in the Definition of a Dependent Child

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Operational Bulletin 588 (Modified) – December 13, 2016

Summary

This Operational Bulletin (OB) provides operational guidance to officers belonging to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). This guidance pertains to the regulatory amendments aimed at introducing a new definition of ‘dependent child’ to section 2 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations (IRPR). The new definition had come into force from August 01, 2014.

It is worth highlighting that with effect from August 01, 2014, the new definition of ‘dependent child’ became applicable across all Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) lines of business. This included those dealing with temporary residents.

The Background

The earlier definition of the term “dependent child” denoted children who were:

  • Under 22 years of age and not spouses or common-law partners OR,
  • Of the age of 22 years or above and dependent on a parent because they:
  • Were fulltime students or,
  • Had specific physical or mental conditions

Sections 121, 128 and 142 of the Regulations documented procedures for locking in the age of dependent children. The procedures concerned locking the ages of dependent children at specified points, during the processing of permanent resident applications for the family and refugee streams. Operational manuals OP 2, IP 8 and OP 5 contained supplementary information on these procedures. Similarly, various operational manuals contained age lock-in procedures for the economic stream only.

However, all these procedures lacked one major clause. They did not consistently address the process of locking in the age of a child at the first formal stage of an immigration program, which involved multiple steps.