My wife has dual citizenship Canadian and EU (Italian) and is applying for CPP disability Benefit. She lived and worked overseas on my EU passport and also received disability. There is a question on the form that asks if she lived abroad and they ask where years and their social security number. They also ask when the individual worked and if that individual received benefits in that country. The question we have is how do we approach that question as it is somewhat tenuous i.e. she lived there on her EU citizenship not her Canadian and she is concerned that they may cause some problems with the citizenship and pensions etc. We travel or rather hope to travel back to that country as it is my home country and I have children there. She sponsored me to this country. Please advise us as to how we should attempt to handle this. Thank you
CPP-D is based on contributions made to CPP.
I’m guessing she didn’t contribute to CPP while working in Italy?
Basically, how it works is that Canada has receiprocal agreements with many countries to recognize government pension contributions…so if you pay contributions in one country those can be transferred to another country for purposes of qualifying for a pension. In terms of applying for CPP disability the problem you may face is that your wife must have been a recent worker and contributor either here in Canada or in the EU. If you are saying she was getting disability in the EU and has not worked in either Canada or the EU for some time, then she will not meet eligibility requirement for entitlement to CPP disability.