Ottawa reverses orders to surrender some ‘lost Canadian’ citizenship certificates

2026/06/24 Leave a comment

Sigh…. Suspect that the lack of discussion at CIMM and SOCI over third and earlier generation impact may reflect a lack of policy analysis over this potential:

Just one week after some “lost Canadians” were told to surrender their new citizenship certificates, a few received letters over the weekend confirming their citizenship claims are valid once again.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson said Monday the department is now reviewing the roughly 4,100 citizenship by descent claims made under an amendment to the law that offers a path to citizenship for those with Canadian ancestors.

Citizenship certificates will not be suspended unless the review turns up a problem with a document already issued, the spokesperson said.

A statement the department issued last week said it is temporarily pausing the finalization of citizenship certificates related to the citizenship by descent amendment passed as Bill C-3.

That amendment allows people born before Dec. 15, 2025 to claim Canadian citizenship if they can prove a direct line to a Canadian ancestor generation-by-generation.

Many of those making citizenship claims under this new rule are Americans.

The department has said it sent letters earlier this month to “a few dozen” people who received citizenship under the citizenship by descent law demanding they surrender their proof of citizenship pending further review….

Source: Ottawa reverses orders to surrender some ‘lost Canadian’ citizenship certificates

Filed under C-3, Citizenship Tagged with ,

Are Your Ancestors Canadian? Here’s What to Know About Becoming a Citizen.

2026/06/22 Leave a comment

More on C-3 implications and interest, this time in NYT. But not convinced that many will move compared to those who want it for security. Not clear whether we will have accurate data re moves however:

…There are about 63,200 citizenship applications for review ahead of the one submitted by Abbey Campbell, who started a TikTok account from her home in the Hudson Valley region of New York, to document her process and educate others on immigration rules.

“What surprised me was how many people were looking for information, and how I wasn’t the only one that felt overwhelmed,” she said. “A lot of people just didn’t know where to start.”

Information crowdsourcing efforts have appeared on social media as applicants search for relatives, share tips about parish records and exchange notes about timelines. There is an extensive Google spreadsheet, hosted on Reddit, with data from hundreds of applicants who have shared their information about their timeline for a response.

Ms. Campbell has continued to make weekly videos and answer questions from the community of potential Canadians, a space that has come to represent hope and excitement, she said. The estimated wait for her application is 11 months.

“A lot of people are planning to move there as soon as they get their citizenship,” Ms. Campbell said. “It’s a gift.”

Source: Are Your Ancestors Canadian? Here’s What to Know About Becoming a Citizen.

Filed under C-3, Citizenship

PROC report: Challenges Regarding Special Voting [Recommendations]

2026/06/18 1 Comment

In general, sensible recommendations with my comments below each one. On a personal note, both of our children are expats, one’s ballot arrived in time (from the USA) the other not (from Europe):

Recommendation 1: That the Government of Canada should consider introducing legislation to amend the Canada Elections Act so as to require electors residing abroad to provide proof of their last place of Canadian residence as part of their application to be added to the International Register of Electors. 

Agree. While the current honour system has merit, given the potential for significant increases in expatriate voting due to C-3 expansion of citizenship transmission beyond the second generation, this would enhance the integrity, and perceived integrity, of expatriate votes.

Recommendation 2: That the Canada Revenue Agency and Elections Canada consider pursuing closer cooperation in order to determine, where possible, the most recent Canadian addresses of voters living abroad so as to assign them the electoral district in which they may vote, and improve the delivery of election information to voters living abroad. 

Worth considering as part of integrity measures and complements recommendation 1. Would only apply to those who submitted tax returns.

Recommendation 3: That for elections held on a fixed date under 56.1(2) of the Canada Elections Act, voters should be allowed to apply for a special ballot at least 45 days before election day, even if the writ has not yet been issued. Elections Canada would then be able to send a special ballot to the elector as soon as the writ has been issued. 

Makes sense. Unfortunately, given fixed election dates are more notional than real so likely little practical impact.

Recommendation 4: That the Canada Elections Act be amended to set the deadline for candidate nominations to close three days earlier than at current (i.e., on day 24 before election day, instead of on day 21 before election day). 

Would help. Not supported by Conservatives.

Recommendation 5: That Elections Canada should use couriers, when it deems appropriate, to send ballots to voters living abroad who are on the International Register of Electors. They should also provide voters with a return label to return their ballot via courier. 

Given that most expatriates don’t pay Canadian taxes, should Elections Canada pick up the tab? Alternatively, Elections Canada could offer a fee-based expedited delivery service, as it does for passports.

Recommendation 6: That Elections Canada should undertake further study of the hybrid ballot delivery systems that are used elsewhere in the world, such as printing a ballot at home to assess the feasibility of implementing them in Canada. 

Never argue about further study but found Elections Canada testimony convincing in terms of some of the issues. Conservatives expressed considerable concerns regarding possible negative impact on integrity.

Recommendation 7: That the Government of Canada should not consider any measures which would see special ballots cast by electors electronically. 

Clear response, based on integrity concerns.

Recommendation 8: That, at present, the Committee does not hold the view that electors, who cast their vote by special ballot, ought to be permitted to write the name of a political party instead of writing the name of a candidate, as was proposed in Bill C-65, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act of the 1st Session of the 44th Parliament. 

Interesting that they ended up here. But the logic is sound, even if one’s vote is party-based, MPs are elected individually. Also required expatriate voters to research the names of candidates, not just indicate the party they support.

Recommendation 9: That the Government of Canada should undertake a study to assess the feasibility of embassies providing ballots and/or acting as polling stations during Canada’s federal general elections. 

No issue with studying the issue but suspect some integrity and operational issues.

Recommendation 10: That the Government of Canada should ensure that, subject to security and logistical considerations, Canada’s embassies, high commissions and consulates provide opportunities for Canadian electors abroad to submit their special ballots for expeditious return to Elections Canada. 

Easier than Recommendation 9, but given the “subject to security and logistical considerations” and the impact on regular mission operations, even the mailbox function would raise complications in terms of meeting ballot deadlines and when they would be counted.

Recommendation 11: That having conducted a comprehensive review of the testimony, the Committee holds the view that there is no consensus on the creation of extraterritorial electoral ridings. 

Fair enough. Good discussion on issue and various complications.

Recommendation 12: That the Committee believes that candidates and political parties bear the greatest responsibilities for motivating electors, including those residing abroad, to turn out to exercise their franchise. For greater certainty, this recognition does not remove or diminish from the responsibilities borne by Elections Canada and Global Affairs Canada to provide information to Canadian electors residing abroad on how to exercise their right to vote. 

Agreed!

Source: PROC report: Challenges Regarding Special Voting [Recommendations]

Filed under Citizenship, elections, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Their Country [Bahrain] Revoked Their Citizenship, Then Tried to Expel Them to Iran

2026/06/18 Leave a comment

Sigh…:

The phone calls that upended their lives came during a family lunch, or while they were at the gym. One man heard the news from a friend, who told him to rush to the bank to withdraw his savings while he still could.

Some of them thought it was a joke, at first. Then Bahrain’s state news agency published their names, confirming that they and their children were among 69 people whose citizenship had been revoked.

Officials in Bahrain, the Persian Gulf monarchy that these families called home, were accusing them of disloyalty during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. A government statement on April 27 described them as individuals of “non-Bahraini origin” who were being stripped of their nationality for “glorifying or sympathizing with hostile Iranian acts.”

For weeks, Bahrain had been arresting people on similar accusations. Some had shared videos online showing missile and drone attacks that Iran had launched at Bahrain, a close U.S. ally that hosts a major American naval base….

Source: Their Country Revoked Their Citizenship, Then Tried to Expel Them to Iran

Filed under Citizenship, Revocation Tagged with

Immigration department suddenly suspends citizenship of scores of ‘Lost Canadians’

2026/06/18 Leave a comment

Further coverage with predictable comments by Chapman. Most of the coverage to date raises few concerns regarding the limited connection to Canada that most applicants have. Will continue to monitor numbers as they emerge:

…Don Chapman, who campaigned for decades for Lost Canadians to receive their citizenship, said for people with Canadian ancestors stretching back hundreds of years birth certificates were not always available, and other official documents such as census records have been accepted by IRCC. 

One Lost Canadian, he said, had an ancestor born in a part of Quebec that did not issue birth certificates. But it did have baptismal records. However, as her ancestors were Jewish they were not baptized. She relied on other official records, including the official census, to prove her ancestors was Canadian. 

“To revoke citizenship by e-mail and without a judicial review is horrifying. It also sets precedence in that no Canadian will ever be secure until citizenship is a right versus a legislated privilege,” he said. 

“I want everyone who was given citizenship to be reinstated, with assurances that they keep it. If not, I expect court challenges where the government should pay all expenses and damages.”

“After decades of being unconstitutionally denied their citizenship, Lost Canadians need to be welcomed home, not shunned,” he added. 

In its statement, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said that “trained officers review all the evidence before them before approving a citizenship certificate.”

The fresh review “is to determine, through an individualized process, whether the certificate was properly issued based on the evidence required by law,” the statement added. 

“This is a necessary and important safeguard, and all affected individuals will have an opportunity to provide additional documentary evidence in support of their case. If the review confirms that the individual is entitled to the certificate, it will be returned.”

Source: Immigration department suddenly suspends citizenship of scores of ‘Lost Canadians’

Filed under C-3, Citizenship Tagged with

Canada asks new citizens to hand back their citizenship certificates

2026/06/17 Leave a comment

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.”

Filed under C-3, Citizenship Tagged with ,

The world’s wealthy are migrating like never before

2026/06/15 Leave a comment

Good survey from The Economist. No fan of these programs as generally minimal benefit to the host country:

….Yet the wealthy can find that a warm welcome sometimes goes cold. In January 2025 Spain, once a popular destination, cancelled its €500,000 ($577,000) residency programme in an effort to curb property speculation. In April the European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that Malta’s scheme broke eu law because it “commercialised” citizenship (though the island’s “citizenship-by-merit” programme, which admits entrepreneurs, has since gained traction). In April this year Argentina cancelled a tender to set up an investment-migration programme, issued only in December, which had drawn interest from 11 firms. Last month Portugal extended most migrants’ waiting time for passports from five years to ten.

Many governments are facing pressure to increase the diligence of their citizenship and residency programmes, notes Mr Klasko. The big issue is: “Do you as a country know the background of people who you are giving passports to?” In other words, geopolitical uncertainty does not only trouble the rich. But plenty of countries will take them—and plenty of advisers are eager to help them choose. 

Source: The world’s wealthy are migrating like never before

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment, Immigration Tagged with ,

A ‘Birthright Citizenship’ Exception — From Canada: The pregnant Dutch crown princess and a quickie proclamation of ‘extraterritoriality’

2026/06/11 Leave a comment

Interesting:

“As the Supreme Court ponders the legality of restrictions President Trump is attempting to impose on “birthright citizenship” in the United States (expect a decision the day the justices leave town for the summer), one unique royal birth at an Ottawa hospital in the depths of World War II offers an exception to the jus soli laws in our neighbor to the north, which mirror our own. The question is whether it could be replicated in this country should the High Court not rule in the administration’s favor.

…Would It Work Here?

The question is whether a similar scheme could be replicated in this country to limit birthright citizenship to the newborn children of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents by declaring any place children are born of other parents as “extra-territorial”.

Legally, it’s a longshot, but keep in mind that: (1) when King George issued his proclamation, nobody knew where Princess Juliana would give birth, and thus extraterritoriality followed her wherever she went before giving birth; (2) that proclamation was issued and effective under the same common law principles the Court relied on in Wong; and (3) it is a precedent, albeit a unique and foreign one.

As for the first — and key — point, consider the following question from Justice Barrett during the oral argument in Trump v. Barbara, the pending birthright citizenship case, to the attorney opposing the president’s EO on the accepted principle that there’s an exception to U.S. birthright citizenship for the children of diplomats:

[I]f you look at the diplomatic exception almost like diplomats and their children have little bubbles around them, like the embassy is really the territory of that country, and even when they’re traveling around, they’re all not subject to the jurisdiction by virtue of this territorial fiction, are those just applications of the rule?

Princess Juliana wasn’t subject to a diplomatic exception (she was a refugee, not a diplomat), but the king’s proclamation created a “bubble” around the heir-apparent wherever she went up to the time of Princess Margriet’s birth in much the same way as the diplomatic bubble described by Justice Barrett applies.

Here, in part, is how counsel responded to the question: “So the thing that all of the exceptions have in common, again, is this sense that the — the person is — has this fiction of extraterritorial — extraterritoriality around them.

If the accepted exceptions to birthright citizenship (the former one for Indians, and the current ones for children of diplomats, and children born in zones of enemy occupation and on foreign ships) have a “fiction of extraterritoriality around them”, what impact would an actual presidential declaration of “extra-territoriality” have

To ask that question is to answer it, but it begs a second question: Can the president, acting on his own, declare parts of the United States to be “extraterritorial” for the brief moments that children of those who are not citizens or green card holders are born there?

Does a 1942 proclamation by the British monarch, issued to avoid a potential succession crisis in the Dutch royal house, offer a precedent an American president could follow to bar the children of aliens here illegally and/or temporarily from automatically receiving U.S. citizenship? It’s a question the White House may want to ask, assuming the Supreme Court gives him bad news on its way out of town.”

Source: The pregnant Dutch cown princess and a quickie proclamation of ‘extraterritoriality’

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Canadian Immigration Tracker: First Quarter 2026

2026/06/09 Leave a comment

Delayed due to grandparent duty!

Covid-19 Immigration Effects – Key Slides – 2026 First QuarterDownload

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with

U.S. applications for Canadian citizenship surge, causing delays

2026/05/18 Leave a comment

Surge is normal and to be expected following the opening up of citizenship by descent beyond the first generation. It remains to be seen in a year or so how much of this is an initial surge versus ongoing demand. Given the expansive nature of C-3, the PBO assessment of some 20,000 per year, stated by the Minister and officials, may understate interest. But too early to call:

Applicants for Canadian citizenship certificates now have to wait a year because of a surge of interest from Americans interested in taking advantage of new Canadian citizenship rules, according to the Canadian government’s processing-time estimator.

U.S. applications surged during the first few months of 2026, with millions south of the border estimated to be eligible for Canadian citizenship based on their ancestry, after Canada changed its citizenship law.

Demand from U.S. citizens added 14,000 applicants to the queue. That includes a large concentration of people who live in New England, where an estimated three million Americans are eligible due to Canadian ancestry arising from mass migration south from 1870 to 1930, as previously reported by National Post.

The wait will be shorter for applicants who filed in December 2025, before the American surge.

Under the change, if a citizenship applicant was born before December 15, 2025, and can trace his or her lineage back to a Canadian ancestor, they are automatically eligible to apply for proof of Canadian citizenship….

Source: U.S. applications for Canadian citizenship surge, causing delays

Filed under C-3, Citizenship Tagged with

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