Within the ninety days immediately before the two-year period of conditional permanent residence expires. The evidence supporting it, particularly the job-creation record, has to be built across those two years rather than gathered in the final quarter.
A narrow window at the end of a long wait
The filing window is short and it is the last step in a sequence that has already taken years, which is why it catches people who have stopped watching the calendar. The petition asks whether the investment was sustained and whether the required employment was created, and both are questions about the whole conditional period rather than about its final weeks. Hypothetical example: an investor from Saint-Joachim-de-Shefford requests payroll records from a project sponsor eight weeks before the window opens and receives an incomplete set covering the most recent year only.
Two years of quarterly reporting requested contemporaneously would have cost nothing. Set a reminder for the date conditional residence began, count forward, and mark the window in advance, because the consequence of missing it reaches the whole family. Where jobs are behind schedule, the position is not automatically hopeless, since the standard contemplates employment created within a reasonable time in some circumstances, but that argument needs to be prepared with evidence rather than raised as an explanation for silence.