Common-law application: Details on relationship between PA and step-children?

[compiler1234]

Thank you both for your input! The answer I received this morning from a consultant aligns with the link you posted, Ponga!

We will be including their information on IMM 5406 for completeness sake, and elaborating briefly on it in an LoE. Better to have it than not.

 

[armoured]

Just found this:
https://www.thewayimmigration.ca/immigration-tips/imm-5406-additional-family-info-guide


Leaving off step-children – your spouse’s children are considered your step-children, and they must be listed on your IMM 5406 Additional Family Info form. Sometimes family situations are a bit complicated, such as when you married later in life and your spouse’s children were grown already when you married – you may not be considered a step-parent for practical reasons in that situation. Our advice is to over declare, and still provide the information as if your spouse’s children are your step-children. IRCC can always disregard extra information if they deem that it’s not relevant, but if you fail to declare the information in the first place, you can run into problems with having your file returned as incomplete or in extreme situations, having to defend yourself against a misrepresentation allegation.

I believe what I suggested earlier (and usually suggest): over-declare if uncertain. Not that there was much reason to be uncertain, IMO.

So IRCC automatically determines that a common-law partner's children are the step children of a PA for PR? Really?

Apart from the answer being 'yes', the answer was already provided in the text you gave earlier: "children of your spouse(step-children) or common-law partner." In other words, they're avoiding the question of whether they're (technically) step-children - they want to know about children of your spouse/common-law partner.

Frankly I wish they'd collapse this and make it more easy by stating up-front that in almost all cases, 'spouse' is used interchangeably with common-law partner.