Canada

How to Get Your Canadian Citizenship

May 18, 2012 By Antonio Cangiano 84 Comments

Yesterday I took, and passed, the Canadian citizenship test. Much like obtaining the G1 license in Ontario, I didn’t find enough information online about the process, so I thought I would share some details regarding my personal experience here.

The process to obtain your Canadian citizenship

Before delving into the details of preparing and passing the citizenship test, I want to provide you with a quick overview of the entire process:

First you’ll need to determine if you are eligible to apply and then, if you are, apply for Canadian citizenship. You’ll need to be a permanent resident who’s been in the country long enough in order to do so.
Wait a long time. The current processing time is, on average, about 19 months. After several months, the status of your application will change to reflect the fact that your application has been received and is now being processed. Thankfully you can check the status of your citizenship application online. At some point you might receive a notice in the mail stating that your application has been accepted. This notice doesn’t mean that you’ll become a Canadian citizen for sure; just that the CIC has verified that your application was prepared correctly and will now be further processed.
Some time later, you’ll receive a notice to appear at a local citizenship and immigration center. This notice will tell you exactly what documents you need to bring, as well as the date and time of your meeting.
Once you pass your knowledge and linguistic ability test, you’ll be invited to a citizenship ceremony, which will is typically attended by yourself and your family and friends. Here you’ll receive a citizenship certificate, which (it’s worth noting) cannot be used for identification purposes (as the government wants you to apply for a passport instead).

Since most people already have citizenship from a different country (in my case, Italy), it’s important to note that Canada is happy to give you citizenship even if you plan to keep your original citizenship. Dual citizenship is allowed in Canada.

Other countries however may not allow you to keep your original citizenship or may require you to go through a process to let them know about your new citizenship. Either way, this has nothing to do with Canada, and you should contact your country of origin’s consulate in Canada for questions related to dual citizenship.

Back to the topic of the citizenship test itself, in this post I focus on the third step in the process outlined above, which is the least documented one. The fourth step is really straightforward. It’s just a formal ceremony where you’ll recite the oath of citizenship, sign and receive your citizenship certificate.

On the day of your citizenship test

You may wondering what things are going to be like on the day of your citizenship test. The notice you receive in the mail prior to this day will include details of where and when you need to appear. If you foresee not being able to attend on your scheduled test date, contact the CIC (by telephone) immediately to let them know and to reschedule your test.

It’s important that you arrive on time. In my case I arrived half an hour beforehand, and I suggest you do the same to be on the safe side. Nevertheless, in my case arriving early turned out to be a moot point because the appointment was at 1pm, and the office was closed between 12pm and 1pm for lunch. (At my local Kelowna center the opening hours were 10am-12pm, and 1pm-3pm, but I’m not 100% sure that your local center will have the same hours.)

You’ll be asked to provide your notice to the clerk at the window, and then to have seat. After a while you’ll be called in for registration. This is an informal interview that should not last more than 10-15 minutes. During this interview you’ll be asked to provide the original documents of the photocopies you sent in with your citizenship application, as well as a photocopy of your passport’s biographical information (basically the first two pages).

They won’t really tell you right there, but during this short interview you’re actually being tested on your linguistic skills (whether you opt to have a conversation in English or French is up to you). The interviewer may ask you generic questions about your life, why you moved here, where you work, and so on. They should not ask you knowledge based questions at this point. This step is primarily done to figure out if your English or French is good enough for you to to become a Canadian citizen.

If your English (or French, if you chose French) is considered to be poor, you won’t be taking the written knowledge test. Instead, you’ll be scheduled to meet with a judge who will ask you knowledge questions and then make a final decision regarding whether your linguistic skills are good enough for you to be granted citizenship.

If your English (or French) is poor to the point of not being able to communicate with at least a certain degree of ease, the immigration official is, in theory, allowed to fail you as though you had failed the knowledge test (more on this topic in a moment). I don’t believe this happens very often though, as they are very understanding of linguistic challenges, but you should be able to communicate in one of the two official languages in order to obtain your Canadian citizenship.

Once this registration/linguistic test is over, you’re asked to take a seat in the waiting room. After everyone (in the room with you) has registered, you’ll be invited into a different room where the actual knowledge test will take place.

The Citizenship Knowledge test

The knowledge test is aimed at verifying your understanding of:

The rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizens
Canadian knowledge (history, geography, culture, political system, etc)

All the information you need to know in order to pass the test is contained within the Discover Canada guide, which is available for free in print, online, as an ebook, audiobook, and even in iPhone format. This guide is only 50 page long, but it contains a significant amount of details, names, and dates. Do not wait to open up the guide for the first time the day before the test, as this will most likely not give you enough time to adequately study and go on to pass the test.

Key Federal Government Figures

The citizenship knowledge test contains 20 questions, and you are provided with 4 possible answers for each of them. You need to circle the correct answer for all of these questions on the sheet provided. If you get five or less questions wrong, you’ll pass the test. If you get six or more wrong, you’ll fail. Each applicant gets their own completely randomly generated set of 20 questions, so there’s no way to base your own test questions directly off of those someone else may have had.

The fail rate has increased over the last few years. This used to be a trivial test with a mere 5% failure rate. Today however that number has climbed to over 30%. This is to say, you’ll probably pass, but you need to actually study in order to do so. Your average Canadian citizen polled at random on these questions would not pass the test.

You are given 30 minutes to complete the test, which might not seem like that long, but to be honest, it should be plenty of time for most people. I had 19 of the 20 questions answered within two minutes of sitting down. One question’s phrasing was a bit ambiguous so I spent some time thinking about which answer was “more correct” in their view.

I don’t remember all the questions that I was presented with, but there was definitely a mix of both very basic and somewhat harder ones on the test. For example, among the basic questions, they asked me about Canada’s winter and summer sports (hockey and lacrosse, respectively), who the Prime Minister was (Stephen Harper), and who sits at the House of Commons (MPs elected by citizens to represent their electoral district).

As well I remember questions about things such as which are the Atlantic provinces (Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick), and which provinces formed the Confederation in 1867 (Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick). Topics such as what the highest honor in Canada is (Victoria Cross), who the first Prime Minister (Sir John A. MacDonald) was, and where the majority of Quebec’s population lives (St. Lawrence’s river) were also covered in my sampling of test questions.

I don’t remember the exact questions for the, supposedly more advanced questions, but I believe they delved into such things as when Nunavut became a territory (April 1, 1999), Vimy Ridge, D-Day and Juno Beach, and the names of early Canadian explorers.

Once you are done answering the questions, you leave the room and wait outside. After a little bit someone will come out to inform you regarding whether you passed or failed the test (but no score or feedback on the specific questions will be provided). If you pass, you’ll also receive a notice in the mail inviting you to attend a ceremony where you’ll take the oath and receive your citizenship certificate. In my case this will take place at the end of next month, six or so weeks after the knowledge test, but I’m sure these dates vary a lot depending on your own location.

The whole citizenship test process took about an hour and a half, but this too will depend on the number of people attending the test, how many government employees are working that day, etc.

If you fail the knowledge test, they’ll schedule an interview with a judge on a different date. The judge will ask you to prove your knowledge to see if you’re ready to become a citizen yet or not. If you are, you may receive your citizenship. If you aren’t, I believe you’ll have to reapply for citizenship from scratch (a process that takes at least a year and a half).

Preparing for the Canadian citizenship test

Since the stakes for failing the knowledge test are high, I really recommend that you study the guide in-depth before attempting the test. Personally, I made the mistake of starting to study the guide only a few days before my test. As a result, I had to cram a ton of information into a very short amount of time. Thankfully, I ended up being over-prepared for the test, which I found to be quite easy compared to some of the obscure facts I had learned (from the official guide) in preparation for the citizenship test.

Ideally you’ll want to start studying from the day that you receive the notice onwards. If you do, hopefully you’ll find the test to be easy and will save yourself a lot of last minute stress.

If all you do is read the guide through once, cover to cover, you’ll probably fail the test. Read/study it at least a couple of times and then take as many practice tests as you can. Also, don’t forget to look up information about key government figures in your own province or territory. I personally made sure I knew even the names of the leaders of the opposition parties at both the federal and provincial level (I knew the federal ones already, having a keen interest in politics, but I had to look up and memorize the local ones for British Columbia, the province where I now live.)

Key B.C. Provincial Government Figures

I have found the following citizenship practice tests to be beneficial. 90% of the questions on my actual citizenship test were not new to me, as I had encountered very similar ones before through these practice tests.

Canadian Citizenship Test iPhone/iPad app by Jonathan Lum
Citizenship Flash Cards iPhone/iPad app by Tip Top Good Studio
Practice Tests by V-Soul
Practice Tests by Richmond Public Library
Workbook Canada Citizenship Test

Keep in mind that some of the answers for things that change may be slightly outdated on these tests (e.g., who the leader of the Opposition Party is), but generally speaking they do a terrific job at helping you prepare.

I truly believe that if you can pass the practice tests with ease, you won’t have a problem with the real one, as many of the sample questions are extremely close to the real deal.

Should you face a question for which you truly don’t know the answer, you can start by excluding the answers that you feel are obviously wrong. Usually you’ll instinctively feel that 2 out the 4 possible answers are wrong. If you can narrow it down to two choices, you have a 50% chance of picking the right one.

Many non-profit organizations provide free classes to help you prepare for the test as well. I went to the South Okanagan Immigrant and Community Service center for the first time a couple of days before my test, so there was no time for me to take an actual course. However I did get to have a volunteer test me on my knowledge (by asking me sample questions).

Similar organizations exist all across the country and if you contact your nearest one as soon as you receive your notice to appear (or sooner, if you want to get a lot of prep work in), you’ll be able to attend classes on the material you need to learn and will feel less like you’re on your own throughout the study process. (A list of local organizations of this kind are provided on the pinky-orange colored sheet of paper you should receive with your notice to appear.)

In conclusion, if you prepare for the test, you stand a good chance of coming out just fine. Best of luck to you, soon to be, fellow Canadian citizen.

A few updates from the Okanagan

April 24, 2012 By Antonio Cangiano 3 Comments

[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text]

It’s a warm, quiet night so I thought I’d spend a couple of hours catching up on my blogging. In particular, I thought I’d post a brief update on what’s been transpiring in my life as of late.

It’s worth nothing that in my personal blog I haven’t adopted a particular blogging strategy when it comes to the type of content I opt to publish (such as the ones I advocate in my book.) Rather I aim at writing interesting posts regardless of subject, and offer family, friends, and “followers” a way to keep up with various going-ons in my world.

The big news at the moment is that my wife and I recently moved to the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia (specifically Penticton) from Toronto. It’s hard to believe that it’s been only two months since we left the hustle and bustle of urban Ontario. We went through so much stress/work/change, that it feels like half a year has gone by since then.

Our new house

Our new place is a stunning little house on two levels (plus basement). It has 3 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, and a good sized area that we’ve utlized as a craft room for my wife’s scrapbooking and vintage addiction. Decorating the house the way we like wasn’t cheap, but people can’t stop complimenting us on how nice and classy it looks, so evidently that was money well spent. Suffice it to say, it was a fun and crazy shopping spree. I’ve never spent so much money in so little time. Thankfully that has come to a halt now, as we have all our bases covered. 😉

I even acquired one hell of a BBQ which has seven burners in total and can cook up to 37 burgers (or something like that) at the same time. I’m quickly becoming a master of outdoor cooking — and I’ve never felt so North American before. 😛

The actual renovation (which came before we arrived and started decorating and adding fancy furniture) was done by my father-in-law’s renovation company, who did an amazing job. The place looked brand new the second we arrived. I’ll try to take some pictures soon and post them here for you to see.

What really strikes me as being different is that our new home is located in a cul de sac near a creek and therefore is much quieter than the 23rd floor apartment directly above the busiest highway in Canada where we used to live in back in Toronto. In fact, all I can hear right now is the sound of the water babbling a mere 200 feet or so away. Very zen-like, I tell you.

My office is smaller than it was at our old house, but I love it nevertheless. Living in such a quiet environment enables me to better concentrate on work and other productivity tasks when I’m on the computer.

Penticton is beautiful

Penticton turned out to be bigger than I expected. Before coming to live here I’d thought of it as a small town, but it’s really more of a small city. There are very few things that it lacks and I love that any destination is just five minutes away. Even for things not available locally (e.g., the upcoming arrival of Target in Canada), there is a larger nearby city (Kelowna) located less than an hour away which usually gets you covered.

This town is stunning. It’s located between two lakes and it has an amazing mountain backdrop. It’s hard not to fall in love with this place and I can see why it’s one of the number one destinations in which wealthy people choose to retire in Canada.

In my experience people are very friendly around here as well, much more so than in Toronto. This can likely be attributed to the fact that Penticton is a much smaller city. It’s nice to see a more upbeat and relaxed approach to life by the locals, as this outlook helps puts one in a good mood.

As one might assume, it’s a much less multicultural area as well, so people may find my Italian accent to be somewhat of a novelty, and they may be more prone to ask about my background, how I ended up here, etc, and to show a genuine interest in talking to me.

I’m truly enjoying this little city, and I absolutely love and cherish being so close to my parents-in-law. They are kind, wonderful people who care about my wife and me, and I genuinely love to spend time with them.

B.C. driver license acquired

I got my B.C.’s drivers license and can now drive on my own. It turned out that my Ontario’s learner license (G1) was not transferable to British Columbia. So I had to restart the process from scratch and retake the theory test. I did it on the spot upon learning about this setback, without studying, as I was pretty confident that it wouldn’t be too different from what I learned in Ontario. I’m happy to say that such was the case and I passed on my first try.

As a result I immediately regained my status as learner and was able to amply practice driving with my in-laws and their cars for a couple of weeks. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait for a full year before being able to take the actual driving test, as they were able to credit the time I spent practicing as a learner in Ontario towards my B.C. license. I took the driving test in mid-March and passed on my first try as well. Now I’m an N driver, which carries a few limitations, but essentially allows me to drive on my own everywhere I wish.

The B.C.’s driving test is definitely more challenging than the Ontario one because it tends to last much longer (30-60 minutes, at least here in the Okanagan.) The streets are less busy, but they also have more oneways, school zones, roundabouts, and other occasions to fail as an inexperienced driver. I’m glad I beat the incredibly high rate of first timers who fail at this examination center.

Another difference is how afforable insurance is in BC. In Ontario it would have cost me several hundred dollars a month for a basic package. Here I only pay less than $250 and get full coverage, including vandalism, theft, etc. This was a pleasant surprise which enabled me to consider the purchase of a nicer car than I expected.

My new car

Truth be told I had a major incentive to get my driver license right away. Sitting in my driveway was my new car — a nice Jaguar S-Type. About a week before, when I was still a learner, I went to North Vancouver to purchase the car and drove it all the way back to Penticton (250+ miles) with my in-laws.

What an amazing experience it was to suddenly be driving surrounded by mountains, lakes, and nature in general. I was afraid of crashing the car before even getting it home, but thankfully nothing bad happened.

My father-in-law, who was a mechanic for ages, could not believe how new the car was under the hood. He told me point blank, “If you are not buying it, I am. This is a steal.” With only 40,000 miles on it and being the third luxury vehicle of an elderly gentleman (single owner), the car is virtually new inside and out and I can’t believe my luck in having scored such a wonderful car. How many people who don’t have wealthy parents can claim that their first car was a Jaguar? 🙂

Jokes aside, I love how comfortable and smooth the car is. I can really tell the difference when I’m driving someone else’s non-luxury car. Even newish cars feel bumpy and uncomfortable by comparison. The heated leather seats are even more comfortable than my couch or office chair.

Diet on hold

The bad news is that I’ve put my diet on hold during this period. I shouldn’t have, but I did for convenience sake. We spent several weeks at my in-laws, while our new house was being prepared and as we were waiting for our belongings to arrive from Ontario. Having to measure grams and calories (well, Weight Watchers points) for everything when you are staying at someone else’s house and eating out frequently, was a bit too much.

I decided to give myself a break from the diet to make these two months be a little easier, as they were exciting and stressful enough without having to worry about diet, weight, etc. Despite being much more active, I have gained back a little bit of weight as a result of being more lax with my diet.

But I’m not going to bullshit you. It’s still an excuse. I could very well have decided to stick to the WW plan. Thankfully, not all is lost. I’ll be back on the horse in a matter a days (I’m restarting my diet in May).

Getting back into photography

Now that I’ve a car for the first time in my life (growing up, my parents didn’t have one either), I’m discovering how many opportunities it opens up. I still catch myself thinking, “Oh I can’t do that, you’d need a car… Oh, right, I have one.” Photography has always been my main non-work-related hobby. I love it so much that I’ve even considered making it my profession at various times throughout my life.

I discovered that having a car changed my perspective on photography. In an old article I mentioned how I bought a compact camera because carrying around the DSLR and lenses was such a hassle. Imagine taking the bus and having to carry a heavy backpack laden with expensive photography equipment with you. Not having a car definitely affected the amount of use I got out of my pro-level equipment.

Now that I have a car, taking my camera and lenses with me when I’m out and about is a no brainer. I’ve also found that the Lowepro backpack I use works beautifully as a bag when opened up in the trunk of the car. Before I felt it was useless for my needs.

Practicality of carrying the equipment aside, the car allows me to scout better locations (for portraits), and enables me to photograph a greater variety of interesting subjects and locations.

My burning passion for photography, which never waned, really wants to take advantage of my new found mobility and freedom. I also tend to wake up quite early in the morning as I tend to start working at 9am EST (which is 6am here in B.C.), so my work day is generally over by 2 or 3 pm, which leaves me with plenty of time to go out and shoot. Of course, the downside is that I can’t go to sleep at 3am like I used to. But all in all, I feel that this new arrangement works well.

I’m including three pictures here which I’ve recently taken sine getting back into photography. They are respectively my beautiful wife Jessica, my beautiful mother-in-law Lynn, and the location spot near Skaha beach at the Okanagan Falls where I took Lynn’s portrait.

Equipment wise I’m still pretty good, even though my 30D is starting to be a bit old at this point. I bought it 6 years ago and it has only 8.2 megapixels, not a great number if you need to crop and make big prints like I do (megapixels are not so important per se, but the camera has other shortcomings as well). So I’ve been eyeing the Canon EOS 5D Mark III like crazy lately. With all the expenses we’ve been dealing with recently however, I’ll probably hold off for a few months before acquiring it. But it’s definitely on my wish list.

I’m also happy to have found a solid color management workflow thanks to the recent purchase of a Spyder4 Pro and a ColorChecker Passport. The first one calibrates your monitor, while the second one effectively helps you calibrate your camera so that the RAW images have a custom profile applied to them which makes the recorded colors as close to the real colors as possible. It’s micro-optimization stuff for sure, but as an engineer I like this kind of exact geekery. I should blog about this type of stuff soon as I’m sure others are considering these kinds of tools and wonder if they’re worth it.

OK, this is enough of a narcissistic fix for now. I don’t usually talk so much about myself, the things I own, etc, but they’ve been such large changes in my life lately that I felt they were worth sharing.

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

I’m moving to Penticton, British Columbia

January 27, 2012 By Antonio Cangiano 5 Comments

This year is shaping up to be one of radical change. Some of you may know how I finally decided to take control of my weight, and that I’ve been working on it for a month now.

An arguably far greater change is on the horizon though. In less than a month I will be relocating to Penticton, B.C., at least for the foreseeable future.

My wife’s series of aggravating medical problems have chiefly motivated this move. In fact, Penticton happens to be my wife’s hometown, where her family still lives.

Penticton

(Image by jconybeer)

With a population of less than 50,000 people, my new city may be many times smaller than Toronto, but the whole area (known as the Okanagan) is a gorgeous, highly popular resort destination chosen by many as their “place to stay forever” (Penticton’s tagline).

It’s where I got married, and I have many fond memories of those days spent surrounded by nature in one of the most Canadian environments I can think of.

I’ll keep you posted and if you are in the area, feel free to drop me a line.