Canadian citizenship rules changed in 2025, when people who should have inherited Canadian citizenship from their parents and grandparents were added back into the rules. “Lost Canadians” can now return to being Canadian.
For family members who didn’t inherit citizenship, Canadian citizens and landed immigrants can still sponsor their spouse/partner and children to come to Canada, called “reunification”.
Reunification is always backlogged, and in July 2022 immigration suspended the reunification program for parents and grandparents. As a partial mitigation, there is a ten-year “super visa” for parents and grandparents.
In 2009, a not-very-nice Prime Minister stripped away rights to inheriting citizenship that had been established in 1977. In 2025, we fixed that. Now, you can apply to regain Canadian citizenship.
You’re already a citizen if you’re
•born in Canada
•born outside Canada and your parents were Canadian citizens at time of birth, or
•born outside of Canada, to parents whose ancestors were considered Canadian, under the same rules.
The 2009 changes blocked people who were
•born to Canadian parents who were also born abroad (ie, the second generation abroad,)
•adopted by first-generation Canadians born abroad.
We fixed that. Now a Canadian parent born or adopted abroad can pass citizenship to their child born abroad before 2025. If the child was born after 2025 the parent would need to “spend three years in Canada prior to the child's birth or adoption”
If you are Canadian by descent, you can apply for a citizenship certificate, and use that to apply for a Canadian passport. You’ll need
•birth certificates,
•your parents' or other ancestor’s Canadian citizenship documents, and
•proof of your parent's status at time of your birth.
It’s not actually hard, but there is a lot of just plain work, described in
This is popular: any whole families are applying. This caused the caseload to increased by 10:1 over previous years, and the processing times went as high as six months.
Fortunately, the process has been streamlined. Now an application will be given a first sanity-check, and if they’re signed, have photographs and payments, and have a complete application form filled out, they'll be accepted into the process. If you’re missing some part of the list, you’ll get the chance of submitting it. If you’re missing one of the important parts above, though, you’ll have to start over.
This change saves a lot of time for the applicant, as people aren’t starting over from scratch if they’re missing anything or have misunderstood what was asked for. It’s also a lot less repeated work for immigration.
You can now apply urgently for a citizenship certificate if you face potential harm or hardship because of “sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or, membership in particular groups”. This is especially true of trans people: some have reported processing in weeks rather than in months.
You will need to write a covering letter and provide supporting information, such as a doctor’s note.
Once processed, lost Canadians can get a passport with a sex of M, F or X.
This the first concrete evidence that Immigration has taken notice of the danger of remaining in the US if you are a trans citizen or resident.
•Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada pages on inherited citizenship
•2025 changes, https://immigration.ca/claiming-canadian-citizenship-by-descent-under-canadas-new-citizenship-act-bill-c-3/
•Canada’s digitized census records (which are available to Googling and AI bots) https://www.canada.ca/en/library-archives/collection/research-help/genealogy-family-history/censuses.html
•A calculator to see if you’re eligible, https://www.canadavisa.com/citizenship-by-descent.html
•Instructions about proving a line of decent, https://www.cicnews.com/2026/05/where-americans-are-finding-the-documents-needed-to-prove-canadian-citizenship-by-descent-0575487.html
•borderlines podcast #194 – Are You Now a Canadian? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1siBJvxqc9Q
•discussion group at https://www.reddit.com/r/Canadiancitizenship/ Also see their FAQs
•facebook group, Canadian Citizenship by Descent (Bill C-3) at https://www.facebook.com/groups/501813032715040
•Processing times: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/application/check-processing-times.html
Sponsorship for refugees is different, see Chapter 9, As a True Refugee.
If you’re not a lost Canadian, but have a family relationship to a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, you can have them sponsor you.
This works best for a spouse/partner and children. There is a related mechanism to grant a 10-year “super visa” for parents/grandparents to live in Canada, to replace the old option of sponsoring parents and grandparents.
•immigration.ca
•Processing times: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/application/check-processing-times.html
This is a live document. These links will change. Always refer to the government pages for current rules. And please file an issue at https://codeberg.org/tokugawa-behr/Fleeing-to-Canada/issues so I’ll know what needs updating.
If you have Canadian ancestors, look and see if you’re a Canadian already. If not, look at a family sponsorship.