Canada asks new citizens to hand back their citizenship certificates

Sigh…. Once again, none of these potential issues came up during Commons and Senate hearings on C-3, no such complications were raised and in general hearings did not focus on the effective shift to jus sanguines that C-3 engendered. Only Indian media I recall raised the “endless chain of citizenship” potential:

…The letters from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) give two reasons why these applications were flagged for review.

First, the documents submitted did not come from the source authority: the civil registry, the vital statistics office, provincial archive, or another official body that creates and holds the record needed to support a citizenship application.

Looking for a guide on how to obtain the needed descent documents from the province of Quebec? Visit our dedicated webpage to get all the details.

Second, when an applicant could not get a source document, they did not include a written explanation and proof that they had tried to obtain said documents.

Read against what citizenship by descent applicants describe as submitted, the cause for concern on the part of the citizenship department is generally that applicants do not adequately prove an unbroken lineage (through the appropriate documentation) from a Canadian citizen to themselves.

In other words, these surrender letters have been served to applicants who are Canadian but haven’t proven it the way the government needs.

Common trends among those who were flagged

Based on information they have submitted to citizenship forums, the people who received these surrender request letters tend to fall into a few groups.

Some used printouts from Ancestry or FamilySearch as their main proof for an ancestor. Some had certified records but from an archive rather than a vital statistics office, and now wonder whether an archive counts.

Some had a real gap; no birth record exists for an ancestor born in the 1850s, but they never formally documented the gap to IRCC in their application.

What can I do if I have already received a letter?

Individuals who have received a surrender letter are usually told explicitly what factors have raised an immigration officer’s suspicions, and they can still submit further documentary evidence in support of their application.

In the referenced round of issued letters, the two reasons cited (1. submitting “documents not from an original source authority”; and 2. missing explanations for unavailable records) point straight at the fix.

Utilizing the best practices covered in the previous section and carefully documenting any gaps in the supporting documentation proving your line of descent will already put your application on a significantly stronger footing.

Source: Canada asks new citizens to hand back their citizenship certificates

Government abruptly suspends citizenship certificates issued under ‘lost Canadians’ law

…Estimates of how many people could qualify for Canadian citizenship under the change vary. While the Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that 115,000 people could be affected by the change, Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab told the House of Commons immigration committee that they didn’t expect a surge. 

Since the change went to effect on Dec. 15, the wait times for IRCC to process applications for citizenship certificates has increased substantially from five months in May 2025 to 15 months. 

While the backlog was in 56,000 applications in April and 70,400 in May, IRCC’s website shows 82,000 people are now waiting for their applications for citizenship certificates to be processed.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/7bUPP/1

Lisa Middlemiss, a Montreal immigration lawyer, said it is very unusual for IRCC to suspend a citizenship certificate once it has been issued — let alone suspend so many of them at the same time.

“It’s very unfortunate and very concerning,” she said in an interview. “If IRCC had concerns about the documentary evidence submitted in favour of a proof claim, then they should have investigated that before making a positive determination and not be reopening people’s closed cases.”