Live outside Canada after approuved as sponsor

No - it's not possible. Yes - you should expect problems if you go through with your plans.

As a PR, you must be living in Canada when you sponsor your spouse and you must continue living in Canada until the application is 100% approved and your spouse receives the visa.

Short trips (2-3 weeks) outside of Canada are fine. Anything longer and you are risking having the application refused due to non residency.

It is possible for the sponsor to live outside Canada while a sponsorship application is pending. Anywhere the individual has status to live actually.

It does, however, disqualify a PR from sponsoring. As scylla says: expect problems.

But, sure, you can live outside Canada. Be sure to advise CIC of the change in circumstances. Sponsorship application will be denied. But you could apply again later when you decide and do live in Canada.

I suppose you could try cheating, try to "beat the system," and not report the change in circumstances. But your wife also has the obligation to advise CIC of changes in circumstances.

If you elect to attempt cheating, how will you get caught? Lots of ways.

The good news for those who are interested in maintaining the integrity of Canada's immigration system, there are more ways than ever to catch this sort of thing. Your odds may have been pretty good a few years ago. Not so good now.

Moreover, there is no rush for CIC to catch you. If they do not catch it before the sponsorship application processes goes through, they could find out years from now and it would mean that both of you would become inadmissible for having made a material misrepresentation (remember, omissions, including failing to inform CIC of a material change in circumstances while the application is pending, are as much a material misrepresenation as is outright false statements). PR status would be revoked. You would be barred from coming to Canada entirely for at least two years (this was being changed to a longer time, I do not recall if the change has taken effect as yet, but if not it will and it will be longer than two years). Example: if you were to apply for citizenship in the future, they can require you to report all addresses going back to the date of landing, and if they discover discrepancies during that process -- again, there are many ways for this to happen -- even if that is not until many years in the future, boom, boom, bang! Not good.