Citizenship: A partial return to in-person ceremonies

During the pandemic, IRCC shifted by necessity to holding virtual citizenship ceremonies. Once the pandemic was largely over, a shift back to in-person ceremonies occurred gradually. But the majority new citizens still become citizens through virtual ceremonies.

Reflecting this trend, the department published a Canada Gazette notice allowing for self-affirmation of the citizenship oath (“citizenship on a click”). The petition to Parliament I launched opposing that change, along with considerable negative commentary and likely then Minister Miller’s questioning this proposed change, resulted in it not being implemented.

In response to that petition, the government indicated that approximately two-thirds of all new citizens participated in a virtual ceremony (” From January 1, 2023 to September 30, 2023, the Department has held on average 50 in-person ceremonies and 224 video ceremonies per month with an average of 79 and 135 invited participants per event, respectively.”)

Subsequently, IRCC provided me with citizenship ceremony data from 2020 (start of pandemic) to 2024. The following charts summarize the change over the years.

Using the same percentage breakdown between in-person and virtual ceremonies from January to September 2023 (IRCC was unable to provide breakdowns for this dataset), the following chart contrasts the number of new citizens by ceremony type.

IRCC does provide the option for applicants to specify their citizenship ceremony preferences:

The petition recommended that “Most citizenship ceremonies should be in-person.” However, this data highlights that while over 40 percent of 2024 ceremonies are now in-person, it still remains the fact that the majority of new Canadians participate in virtual ceremonies, reflecting the larger average size of virtual ceremonies.

Given the importance of citizenship ceremonies in immigrant integration and citizenship meaningfulness, any future government should continue and accelerate the shift back to in-person ceremonies.