It's not fraud as long as you state the true reason. That's simple: your spouse is accompanying but not enough qualified - your points decrease. Your spouse is non-accompanying, therefore you are assessed alone and your points increase but you have pay for it by not being able to reunite with you spouse for at least a year. There is no fraud. I believe you are confusing legal issue with ethical issue. What you are describing has a lot to do with ethics, but it's not legally supported as there is no guideline that defines what is a right and what is a wrong reason. The operation manual doesn't even mention anything about the reasons for non-accompanying family members.
Ethically it is wrong but it doesn't mean it's illegal. Let me give you an example. Is it ethically right to fire an employee because you don't like his/her tastes in music? Probably not.
Is it ethical to fire an employee just because you have a bad mood? I don't think so.
Is it ethically right to fire an employee because you suspected he/she stole something but you had no proof and then after you fired a person, it turned out that your accusations were wrong? Definitely not.
Does it mean that those cases are illegal? Well, under the US employment law, for example, (Employment at will), they are perfectly legal.
We could have gone ahead and tried to find out why CIC decided to allow married applicants choose the way of calculating their points instead of just giving all married applicants points for them and their spouses regardless of the spouses accompanying or not accompanying, but it would have been a mere speculation.
The most important question is if it is illegal to utilize this opportunity regardless of the reasons? If there is no law or instruction for the officers that is based on the law that forbids this approach, I think
legally an applicant would be fine provided that he/she states the true reason. Ethically? Maybe not. However, it's not illegal to be a jerk