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When you move to Canada on a skilled route, your spouse or partner and your children can usually come with you. They do not apply on their own: they are listed as your family members on the same application, and each of them has to clear the same health checks you do. This post explains who counts as family in the eyes of IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the government department that decides immigration applications), how a partner changes your Express Entry score and the money you must show, and what a partner and children can do if you go first on a temporary permit. It is not about sponsoring a partner who stays behind and joins you later; that is a separate process, explained in our post on spouse and partner sponsorship.
You are the person applying for a route to Canada, permanent or temporary, and you have a partner, children, or both. If you are already a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and want to bring a partner over, the sponsorship post is the one you need. If you are weighing Canada against New Zealand, we cover the same question in bringing your partner and children with you to New Zealand.
Permanent residence is the right to live and work in Canada indefinitely, and a permanent residence application has one main applicant plus their family members: your spouse or common-law partner, your dependent children, and your partner's dependent children. Parents, siblings and other relatives are not family members on your application, however close you are.
A spouse is someone you are legally married to. A common-law partner is someone you live with as a couple without being married; IRCC has its own test for how long you must have lived together, and our sponsorship post walks through it.
A child is not automatically a dependant just because they are your child. IRCC's page on who you can include as a dependent child sets two tests. A child qualifies if they are under 22 years old and do not have a spouse or partner. A child who is 22 or older qualifies only if they have depended on you for financial support since before they turned 22 and cannot support themselves because of a mental or physical condition.
Age is frozen on what IRCC calls a lock-in date, so a child who passes the age limit during processing still qualifies; the marital test is not frozen, so a child who marries during processing stops being a dependant.
Yes. IRCC's own answer is that all of your dependants must have a medical exam by an approved panel physician (a doctor IRCC has approved for this purpose), regardless of whether or not they are coming with you to Canada. The reason it gives is that they must be admissible (allowed into Canada) to be sponsored in the future, and an inadmissible dependant might make you inadmissible for permanent residence yourself.
Police certificates are a separate check, and who has to provide one is explained in our post on police certificates and medical exams for Canada.
A family member who is not moving with you is still your family member on paper. They are still examined, as above, and they still count towards your family size for proof of funds, which we come to below. The one place a non-accompanying partner drops out is the score: Express Entry treats you as having no spouse if your partner is not coming to Canada.
Express Entry is the online system IRCC uses for its main skilled worker programmes: candidates are ranked by a points score called the CRS (Comprehensive Ranking System), and only the highest-scoring are invited to apply. Our post on how the CRS score works covers every factor; here we look only at what a partner does to it.
IRCC's CRS grid has two columns. If your spouse or common-law partner is coming with you, your core factors (age, education, language ability and Canadian work experience) are capped at 460 points, and your partner can add up to 40 more through the spouse factors: up to 10 for their education, up to 20 for their official language ability, and up to 10 for their Canadian work experience. If you have no partner, if your partner is not coming to Canada, or if your partner is already a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, you are scored in the other column, where your core factors are capped at 500 and there are no spouse factors.
Nothing on the grid says which of you must be the main applicant. Whoever creates the profile is scored on the core factors and the other on the spouse factors, so work the score out both ways before either of you creates a profile.
Proof of funds is the money IRCC asks you to show so you can support yourself after you arrive; our post on proof of funds for Express Entry covers what counts and how to document it. What matters here is family size, because the required amount rises with it.
To work out your family size, the proof of funds page tells you to count yourself, your spouse or common-law partner, your dependent children, and your spouse or common-law partner's dependent children, even if they are Canadian citizens or permanent residents and even if they are not immigrating with you. The amount for each family size is in a table on that page, and IRCC updates it every year, so check it rather than relying on a figure someone quoted you.
Your partner can help meet the amount: money in a joint account with your spouse or common-law partner counts, and money in an account in your spouse's name only may count if you can prove you have access to it.
Many people arrive on a temporary work permit before applying for permanent residence. Your partner can sometimes get an open work permit, which lets them work for almost any employer in Canada without a job offer of their own. On 21 January 2025 IRCC narrowed who qualifies, and the current rule is on its page on open work permits for family members of foreign workers.
As that page states it, your spouse or common-law partner may be eligible if you hold a valid work permit (or an approval for one not yet issued, or an authorisation to work without a permit), you live or plan to live in Canada while working, and you are employed or will be employed in either any high-skilled occupation at TEER category 0 or 1, or a select high-skilled occupation at TEER category 2 or 3 that IRCC lists on the page. TEER is the skill level IRCC assigns to every occupation, from 0 for management jobs to 5 for jobs needing no formal training. Your work permit or authorisation must also be valid for at least 16 months after IRCC receives your partner's application.
Two things catch people out. Since that date, dependent children are no longer eligible for an open work permit under this measure. And the page lists dated exceptions to the occupation rule, such as, from 23 March 2026, a spouse of a worker whose permit was issued under a Significant Investment Project agreement in British Columbia, who can apply at any TEER level. Read the page for the full list before you plan around it.
The rule for students is on IRCC's page on helping your spouse or common-law partner work in Canada. Since 21 January 2025, your partner may get an open work permit only if you hold a valid study permit and are enrolled in a master's degree programme of 16 months or longer, a doctoral degree programme, one of the professional degree programmes the page lists (medicine, law, dentistry, nursing, education and engineering among them), or an eligible pilot programme. Most of the time the partner's work permit is valid for the same period as your study permit.
Yes, and often without paperwork of their own. IRCC's page on minor children studying in Canada says a child who is already in Canada with a parent who is authorised to work or study, including a work permit or study permit holder, can attend preschool, primary or secondary school without a study permit. A child who is coming to Canada together with a parent who holds a work or study permit needs a study permit, so apply for it before you travel.
Our free questionnaire asks your marital status and whether your partner would move with you, and it asks whether you have children who rely on you and whether they would move with you. It records only which option you choose and collects nothing about any child. If your partner is moving with you, it also asks their education, their language test results and their Canadian work experience.
The report uses those answers where a route scores them, which is the CRS spouse factors described above, and where family size changes a requirement, which is proof of funds. It shows you the computation and what it rests on; it does not tell you that you qualify.
Work out your Express Entry score both ways with our free CRS calculator, then answer the questionnaire with your family included to see how your routes to Canada look with them counted in. The pathways the report covers are listed on our Canada page.
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