Have a Canadian Great-Great Grandparent? It Could Make You Canadian.

2026/04/29 2 Comments

More US coverage to the C-3 changes, this from the NYT. Keeps on amazing me that nobody, including myself, noted this implication during discussions of the Bill:

…The change could extend Canadian citizenship to “potentially millions of people around the world, many of whom have never lived in Canada and may have only a distant ancestral tie to it,” said Rick Lamanna, a Toronto-based partner at Fragomen, a global immigration and relocation company.

The new policy, he added, stood in contrast both to those of other advanced economies seeking to limit immigration, and to the Canada’s own significant tightening of other immigration routes.

In the last two years, Canada has slashed the numbers of foreign students, temporary workers and the number of permanent residents. That has already resulted in Canada’s population shrinking.

The policy expanding who can qualify for Canadian citizenship also stands in stark contrast to the evolving discourse about who should be American in the United States, where President Trump wants to see even birthright citizenship curtailed.

Among developed economies, Canada now has one of the most inclusive rules on passing down citizenship generation to generation.

Until 2024, Italy offered citizenship by descent without any generational limit, a path many Americans utilized, but it has since limited citizenship to people with an Italian parent or grandparent.

Only a handful of other countries have in recent years broadened their citizenship to people with more distant ancestry, including Portugal and Slovakia, but with some limitations.

The burden of proof to pursue this new route to becoming Canadian is still significant, a spokesman for the Canadian immigration ministry said, particularly since it could require deep archival research and recovering documents that could be more than a century old.

“While these recent changes extended access to Canadian citizenship by descent, having distant Canadian ancestry alone does not make someone automatically eligible,” said Matthew Krupovich, a spokesman for the immigration ministry.

Documents that meet the bar for the Canadian authorities can include birth certificates, citizenship or naturalization certificates, or other official records showing family relationships and citizenship status, but not information gleaned from genetic testing.

There is early evidence that the new rules are already spurring higher demand for historical records. The Nova Scotia Archives, for example, has seen a sharp increase in requests for official copies of historical records, from about 260 requests in all of 2024 to about 1,500 in just the first three months of 2026, said John Macleod, a manager at the archives.

Still, the numbers for the first few weeks since the changes have gone into effect also highlight that most people fail to secure citizenship. Between Dec. 15 and Jan. 31, about 6,280 applications for proof of citizenship were processed by the Canadian authorities. Of those, 1,480 were confirmed as citizens by descent under the new rules, the immigration ministry said.

The motivation behind pursuing Canadian citizenship varies from person to person. …

Source: Have a Canadian Great-Great Grandparent? It Could Make You Canadian.

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Adams and Parkin: Polls are getting more and more insane

2026/04/29 Leave a comment

Good discussion of current polling challenges and arguments to track evolving attitudes and values:

…There is a still a role for responsible pollsters in these crazy times. Tracking approval ratings remains useful. Currently, the erosion of Mr. Trump’s approval at the very least offers much-needed encouragement to the citizens who oppose him. Taking the long view can be productive as well: Comparing public views today on a consistent set of metrics to those from years past can offer more signal than noise compared to overnight reactions to another outlandish statement.

We should also shift our focus to tracking more enduring values. It is natural to want to know whether opinions are shifting on the President’s policies. What we really need to know, however, is how social values are evolving. Have Americans really become more accepting of violence, more religious, more patriarchal, less cosmopolitan, or less interested in other cultures? This type of polling attracts less attention, yet ultimately gives us the clues we need about what’s driving America’s deepening ideological cleavages.

When the polling industry took off in the middle of the 20th century, led by George Gallup and others, it challenged the ability of politicians to claim, without risk of contradiction, that they spoke for the people. Polls tested those claims, ensuring that the voice of every citizen could be heard. The mission of survey research helped strengthen democracy then, and can continue to do so now. Only a genuine faker would call them fake news. 

Source: Polls are getting more and more insane

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Kazemzadeh: Canada’s Arctic security depends on more than defence — here’s how immigration could help

2026/04/29 Leave a comment

The Arctic argument (only about 300 Permanent Residents in 2025, about 1,000 TRs IMP):

…Immigration and migration are usually considered part of economic policy. In the Arctic, they’re also a security strategy.

Research shows that immigration can help address demographic and labour challenges in rural and northern regions. However, attracting newcomers is only part of the equation — retaining them remains a major challenge.

Statistics Canada data shows that retention rates vary widely across regions, with northern and smaller communities often struggling to keep newcomers over the long term.

This matters for security. A temporary workforce doesn’t build resilient communities. Long-term settlement does. If newcomers to the North stay, they contribute to infrastructure development, local economies and essential services. They become part of the social fabric that supports everything from search-and-rescue operations to climate adaptation efforts….

Canada’s Arctic sovereignty has long been associated with geography and military presence. But sovereignty is now also about resilience — the ability of communities to live, work and thrive in the North.

The Centre for Immigrant Research, a Calgary-based Canadian think tank, argues in its recent work on the North that immigration and migration — when thoughtfully designed and implemented in partnership with Indigenous and territorial governments — can play a key role in strengthening regional resilience and national sovereignty.

Therefore, Canada has an opportunity to rethink its approach. While defence investments are essential, they aren’t sufficient on their own. In the Arctic, security ultimately depends on people — and on ensuring they are able to build and sustain long-term lives in the North.

Source: Canada’s Arctic security depends on more than defence — here’s how immigration could help

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Beinart: What Tucker Carlson Means When He Talks About Israel

2026/04/29 2 Comments

Good commentary:

…Mr. Carlson is more subtle. But he, too, often attributes Israel’s behavior to what he sees as its anti-Western religion. Last October, he claimed that “the Israeli position is ‘everyone who lives in Gaza is a terrorist because of how they were born, including the women and the children.’ That’s not a Western view. That’s an Eastern view. That’s a non-Christian — that’s totally incompatible with Christianity and Western civilization.” Earlier this year Mr. Carlson said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had tried to punish members of Mr. Carlson’s family because Mr. Netanyahu “believes in blood guilt, Amalek. You know, when someone commits a crime against you, you punish not just him but his family, his bloodline. There’s no idea that’s less Western than that, more anti-Christian than that. Christians reject that.”

Mr. Carlson is implying that Israel’s punishment of the Palestinian people stems from something particularly Jewish — or “non-Christian” — about its misdeeds. Such civilizational generalizations are false; many Christian and Western leaders practice collective punishment. The United States was founded on the same kind of land theft that Israel is committing against Palestinians.

Combating the anti-Israel right’s conflation of Israel and Jewishness is made harder by pro-Israel American Jewish organizations that have conflated those two things as well.

But progressives must not blur the distinction between viewing Israel as a state, which practices forms of oppression and aggression that can occur in states of every ethnic and religious type, and viewing Israel as the product of a peculiarly Jewish pathology. It is understandable that some progressives, who are rightly eager to end America’s support for Israel’s human rights abuses, might be tempted to see figures like Mr. Carlson as allies. But the struggle for Palestinian freedom should not indulge bigotry of any kind. That includes the bigotry of figures like Tucker Carlson, who blame Israel’s crimes on its Jewishness so they can pretend that America and Christianity are morally pure.

Source: What Tucker Carlson Means When He Talks About Israel

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Griffith: Canada’s citizenship drift

2026/04/28 Leave a comment

My latest:

Canada’s citizenship policies need to strike the right balance between granting access and fostering belonging and identity. 

The process for obtaining citizenship should be attainable but also ensure prospective citizens are genuinely committed to Canada’s laws, values and social norms.

In Canada, citizenship policy has increasingly favoured facilitation over meaningfulness. This is a departure from the Harper era, when the government made citizenship harder to obtain and easier to lose. 

The recent shift reflects Liberal government policy choices, court rulings and sustained advocacy pressure. While spending restraint has driven some of these changes, they do not appear to be a key driver of changes to the citizenship program itself.  

What has got lost in the policy shift is the importance of fostering belonging and identity. Citizenship should have value beyond merely instrumental benefits, such as protection from deportation or access to a Canadian passport.

This diminished focus on cultivating Canadian identity and belonging can be seen at all stages of the citizenship journey: who becomes a citizen; how prospective citizens are tested; and how new citizens are celebrated.

Who becomes a citizen

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada used to measure how many permanent residents (PRs) became citizens, or the desired outcome. Their goal was for 85 per cent of all PRs to become citizens. 

However, it did not measure citizenship uptake for recent immigrants, those who became citizens within five to nine years after arrival where Statistics Canada has highlighted a significant decline.

IRCC has abandoned even this loose outcome standard in favour of output standards focused on processing time and quality assurance. As a result, IRCC is avoiding needed scrutiny on the decline of immigrants becoming citizens.

Court decisions have also contributed to a perception that citizenship is of diminishing value. 

In 2023, the Federal Court of Canada struck down a law that denied automatic citizenship to children born abroad if their Canadian parents were also born abroad.

The Liberal government chose not to appeal and adopted overly expansive legislation in response. It now allows for retroactive citizenship to be granted almost automatically to anyone with a direct Canadian ancestor, no matter how far back. 

In effect, Canada has adopted a more European jus sanguinis (bloodline) framework layered onto its traditional jus soli (place of birth) model, weakening the requirement for direct, lived connections to Canada across generations.

This hybrid approach risks combining the weaknesses of both systems. 

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada will face greater administrative complexity to assess more distant ancestor links and residency over longer time periods. The end result will be to reduce the meaning and connection to citizenship, particularly for those claiming citizenship through distant, earlier generations.

The government has also taken no action to curb “birth tourism,” where non-citizens intentionally travel to Canada before birth to ensure their child gains citizenship. But data and studies show this is an increasing practice.

Citizenship tests

Prospective citizens are required to take a citizenship test before being granted citizenship.

To help them prepare,the government provides individuals with a citizenship study guide, Discover Canada, which provides basic information on Canadian history, rights and responsibilities, society and geography. 

This guide has not been updated since it was first published in 2009, despite commitments as far back as 2016 to do so, and despite concerns that the guide is not current on topics such as LGBTQ and Indigenous issues. 

The current immigration minister has not commented publicly on the matter. Her transition briefing only says the guide is “near-ready for release.”

It is also not clear whether Ottawa has taken steps to minimize the possibility of citizenship test fraud. The most recent public data indicate a pass rate of 92 per cent on the test, up from a low of 81 per cent in 2010.

Administering multiple, rotating versions of itscitizenship test would reduce the possibility of test takers simply memorizing responses. The government reportedly introduced this safeguard following anecdotal concerns about mnemonic test-taking among some Chinese-origin applicants. It is not clear whether this safeguard is still in place.

These tests are also now mostly administered online, rather than in person, reducing opportunities for shared experience among new Canadians.

Ceremonies

During the pandemic, Ottawa understandably shifted from holding in-person citizenship ceremonies to virtual ones. 

But years after the pandemic, this practice continues. Virtual ceremonies now account for about 55 per cent of all citizenship ceremonies. In 2025, Ottawa even ended funding for enhanced in-person ceremonies delivered by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.

This is unfortunate; in-person ceremonies more meaningfully celebrate immigrants’ journeys and inclusion in the Canadian family. 

The government has also proposed allowing self-affirmation of the citizenship oath, rather than in collective ceremonies. While these proposals have not been implemented, they have not been formally abandoned either. 

For many new Canadians, citizenship is driven by practical benefits, but it also fosters belonging and participation. While efficiency-focused administrative changes are welcome, they should not come at the expense of the experience and meaning of becoming Canadian. 

Citizenship is not just a transaction; it is a key part of the integration journey that strengthens newcomers’ sense of belonging and pride. It should be celebrated publicly, not processed in isolation before a computer screen.

Source: Op-Ed: Canada’s citizenship drift

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Luciani: The rise of the progressive bureaucrat and the fall of the efficient state

2026/04/28 Leave a comment

A bit simplistic but the fundamental point, more public servants with experience in program delivery and client service than policy development.

And of course, previous generations of public servants reflected the attitudes of the day, whether respect to women, visible minorities, Indigenous, LGTBQ:

…Universities like to present policy training as politically neutral, but no school is neutral when its dominant assumptions are absorbed from the surrounding progressive culture in higher education.

Graduates with MPPs and MPAs are no different. They see the world through the values of their generation. They learn the language of inclusion and identity and bring those values to their work. When Statistics Canada asks in surveys what gender you were assigned at birth, you can be certain the department was influenced by a new generation of policy advisors. A public service staffed chiefly by people trained to think in slogans will inevitably produce a slogan-driven government.

Canada needs smart people less enamoured of theory and ideology, and more rooted in the unglamorous work of delivery. More importantly, we need to restore ministerial responsibility. MPs and ministers should be judged on what happens in their departments. And universities should stop imagining that another wave of credentialed policy analysts will repair what politics has allowed to decay.

Source: The rise of the progressive bureaucrat and the fall of the efficient state

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Karas: Canada needs an immediate reset on immigration

2026/04/27 Leave a comment

More commentary arguing for greater emphasis on program integrity and security:

…The federal government must therefore recalibrate all immigration programs. That means stronger pre-arrival screening, improving intelligence-sharing with allies, conducting in-person interviews where warranted, and ensuring that background checks are proportionate to risk. It means holding educational institutions accountable for the students they admit. And it means enforcing existing laws when visas expire or conditions are violated.

Above all, it means acknowledging that public support for immigration depends on confidence in the system’s integrity. When Canadians believe the rules are applied inconsistently—or not at all—support inevitably weakens. A sustainable immigration program requires both generosity and discipline.

Canada can remain open without being careless. It can welcome newcomers while insisting on higher standards, better vetting, and meaningful enforcement. Failing to do so does not serve immigrants, refugees, or Canadians alike. It simply invites cynicism—and risks undermining one of the country’s most important national projects.

Source: OP-ED: Canada needs an immediate reset on immigration

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Lederman: Find out if your kin were Nazis – in seconds

2026/04/27 2 Comments

Discovering some uncomfortable truths:

…For many descendants of German and Austrian families, it has been easy to hang onto vague family stories of Second World War resistance. Now, it has become easier to disturb that comfortable narrative. 

“Research your family’s Nazi past here,” offers an online resource launched by German newspaper Die Zeit. The publication has downloaded digitized documents released by the U.S. National Archives, which were seized at the end of the Second World War. Subscribers can plug in family names and discover whether relatives were card-carrying members of the Nazi party – and view the actual cards themselves.

This has led to a reckoning – a timely one, even with cards dating back decades. …

Source: Find out if your kin were Nazis – in seconds

Correct link to database: https://catalog.archives.gov/search-within/12044361



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Immigration Minister faces criticism from lawyers after interview with influencer

2026/04/27 Leave a comment

Yet another misstep:

Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab is under fire from immigration lawyers for conducting an interview where she discussed forthcoming policy with a social-media influencer who also runs platforms for foreign nationals hoping to settle or study in Canada. 

Ms. Metlege Diab earlier this month conducted a 30-minute interview with Max Medyk about immigration policy, including about a soon-to be announced program allowing thousands of temporary residents to apply for permanent residency, or PR. 

She suggested the program, which has yet to be announced, would be available to people living outside big metropolitan areas. 

During the interview, Mr. Medyk drew the minister’s attention to a site he founded allowing foreign nationals to search for jobs that can lead to PR, and a property rental site used by newcomers and others he acts as an ambassador for. 

The Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association, a non-profit organization with about 500 members, wrote to Ms. Metlege Diab Wednesday expressing concern that she had given indications about a forthcoming policy allowing temporary residents to apply for PR during the interview. CILA’s director Grace Allen said details about the temporary residence to PR program, first referenced in last year’s budget, was being communicated in a piecemeal way including through “commercial and monetized social media platforms,” before being verified by the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada department, leading to confusion and anxiety among prospective newcomers….

Source: Immigration Minister faces criticism from lawyers after interview with influencer

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Jamie Sarkonak: Canada keeps asking non-citizen criminals to stop. They obviously don’t

2026/04/27 Leave a comment

These policies provide fodder for anti-immigration attitudes and diminish trust in government policies and practices:

…Toothless warnings are only part of why Canada has a reputation for nonchalance towards crime. Non-citizens can also receive sentence discounts to lessen their chances of deportation in some cases, and the deportation process offers many opportunities for criminals to challenge, appeal and delay. The entire system tells outsiders that respect for our rules is optional, and that we’ll do what we can to excuse their bad behaviour. While they enjoy their third, fourth and fifth chances, we have to endure watching our once-high-trust society erode away.

While we don’t have a detailed breakdown of how many stern warning letters have been sent, and how many went ignored by people who went on to commit more crime, we ought to stop the practice entirely. The immigration system isn’t a rehab; it’s a filter that should be working to keep Canadians safe.

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Canada keeps asking non-citizen criminals to stop. They obviously don’t

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