So I got the golden email asking me to submit my passport. Now the question is that I have planned to visit few friends over the next weekend (on a current visitor visa). So, can I go visit them, come back and then submit the passport? I haven’t planned a soft landing until September end this year.
Also, can the goods to follow be updated at a later date? Like for example if I do a soft landing in Sept and plan to move after 2 years for good. What happens to the goods that I’ll purchase after June until my final move after two years?
Lastly, say suppose I get my PR card, post that I want to visit Canada but I don’t Intent to do a hard landing. Can I continue to visit Canada after a soft landing and do the final hard landing after 2 years?
There’s no such thing as a soft landing from the CBSA perspective. There’s only landing as an immigrant at which point you become a PR.
There are two ways you can import your stuff -
Goods Accompanying
Goods to Follow
You can move your goods to follow anytime during your permanent residence.
Now to answer your question about goods that you buy after landing, the Goods to Follow list doesn’t need to be extremely detailed except for big ticket items like Cars where you need to provide your VIN. You can otherwise add line items for
Clothing
Electronics
Books
Furniture
etc along with their approximate valuation. Jewelry needs to be photographed and appraised separately.
When you actually bring your items it depends on the CBSA official to decide on if they want to examine your items. If you’re moving your entire household items it’s highly unlikely that CBSA will give your items even a glance. That said it’s probably not a good idea to have new stuff unopened in their original packing that you’ve never used.
In our case we had a lot of baby stuff, that we hadn’t declared because we had the baby after we did the landing and they didn’t care about that one bit. Our car was declared and that was also duty and tax free however the trailer that I had bought wasn’t and I had to pay federal duty on the border and the PST upon registration.