Are you a Canadian by descent? New citizenship rules are in effect for ‘Lost Canadians’

2025/12/19 Leave a comment

Good plain language explanation:

…How do officials count generations in applying the new rule?

According to the Immigration Department, the first generation is defined as the first person born or adopted outside Canada to a Canadian citizen.

Whether a Canadian parent was born in Canada or is a naturalized citizen, their children born abroad are counted as first generation and considered Canadian by descent. The children born outside Canada to a first-generation person are now Canadian provided their first-generation parents meet the three-year physical residency requirement before their births.

This is also how officials count generations for people who are adopted and apply for a direct grant of citizenship.

What if you were born or adopted on or after Dec. 15, 2025?

People born outside Canada in the second generation or later may be Canadian if their parent was also born or adopted outside Canada to a citizen and that same parent spent at least three years in Canada before the birth. 

Adopted people are likely eligible to apply directly for Canadian citizenship if they were born and adopted outside Canada in the second generation or later, and if that same parent meets the residency requirement before the adoption. 

How about those who were born or adopted before the new law?

In most cases they are automatically a Canadian citizen if they were born before Dec. 15, 2025, outside Canada to a Canadian parent. The new rule also applies to those who were born to someone who became Canadian by descent because of the rule changes.

Adopted people should be eligible to apply directly for citizenship if they were born and adopted outside Canada in the second generation or later before that date.

What if you have a pending citizenship application under an interim measure?

In December 2023, after the court ruled the two-generation citizenship cut-off rule unconstitutional, Ottawa put in a temporary initiative to offer discretionary grant of citizenship by descent to certain affected groups while it worked on new legislation to make the citizenship law Charter-compliant. It resulted in more than 4,200 applications.

Any pending application under this measure will be processed under the new rules, and no new citizenship certificate application is required.

How do you prove your Canadian citizenship?

Those who believe they are eligible for citizenship by descent under the new rules should apply for a citizenship certificate as proof of citizenship if they became a citizen automatically. They will be assessed accordingly.

Source: Are you a Canadian by descent? New citizenship rules are in effect for ‘Lost Canadians’

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Americans apply to revive Canadian citizenship to escape the U.S. under Trump

2025/04/01 Leave a comment

Still mainly anecdotal. Unfortunately, IRCC does not publish citizenship application data on open data

…Immigration consultants and lawyers say they have also had a surge in inquiries from “Lost Canadians” in the U.S. about moving to Canada.

Some “Lost Canadians” told The Globe they want to leave the country out of fear of being detained based on their race, while others said they don’t want to raise children in Mr. Trump’s America.

“In the past few weeks, we have received an increased number of inquiries from American citizens of various backgrounds asking about immigration to Canada, including Lost Canadians,” said Annie Beaudoin, an immigration consultant based in California who used to work for Ottawa’s federal Immigration Department.

Melissa Babel, founder of Babel Immigration law in Ontario, said on Thursday: “I’m getting a lot of calls from people who remember that their grandfather was Canadian – three yesterday.”…

Source: Americans apply to revive Canadian citizenship to escape the U.S. under Trump

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LoP – Canadian Citizenship: Practice and Policy

2025/02/22 Leave a comment

Good comprehensive review by the Library of Parliament of legislative and policy issues along with related history. Lots of familiar references to declining rates of citizenship, “lost Canadians” and birth tourism. Executive Summary below:

Canadian citizenship can be obtained through birth on Canadian soil, by descent through birth or adoption outside of Canada to a Canadian citizen, or through naturalization (the process by which citizenship is obtained by a foreign national). Requirements related to citizenship are laid out in the Citizenship Act, as well as in the Citizenship Regulations and Citizenship Regulations, No. 2.

Responsibility for implementing the Citizenship Act lies with the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, who is supported by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) in managing the citizenship application process. The Citizenship Commission – an administrative body under IRCC that is made up of citizenship judges – also plays an important role, with duties including assessing citizenship applications to ensure they meet certain requirements under the Act and administering the Oath or Affirmation of Citizenship.

To become a Canadian citizen through naturalization, an individual must first obtain permanent residency in Canada and then apply for citizenship after meeting residency and other requirements. Applicants between 18 and 54 years of age must also complete a written test based on the official citizenship study guide (Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship) and attend an interview to test their abilities in English or French and to discuss their application. Successful applicants attend a citizenship ceremony and take the Oath or Affirmation of Citizenship, through which they swear or affirm their allegiance to the King of Canada.

Loss of citizenship can occur if it is revoked (for example, due to citizenship being acquired or retained through false representation) or it can be renounced voluntarily (for example, if an individual chooses to become a citizen of a country that does not allow dual citizenship).

Several issues are currently at the forefront of discourse on citizenship policy. For example, census data show that the rate of citizenship among recent immigrants to Canada declined between 2006 and 2021. The citizenship rate varies for different groups, with contributing factors including income level, education level and country of origin.

Another key issue is that of “lost Canadians,” which refers to individuals who were born before the 1977 Citizenship Act came into force and who should have been Canadian citizens under that Act but were deprived of Canadian citizenship because of outdated or obsolete provisions in the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947. Many of the problems associated with “lost Canadians” have been addressed through amendments made to the Citizenship Act since 1977. Those whose cases are not covered by legislative amendments may be granted citizenship on a case-by-case basis at the minister’s discretion. Following a December 2023 Ontario court ruling, the federal government introduced Bill C‑71, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act, to address “lost Canadians” issues that remain following previous legislative amendments. This bill died on the Order Paper on 6 January 2025 when the 1st session of the 44th Parliament was prorogued, but the Court’s order is scheduled to come into effect on 19 March 2025.

Finally, the concept of birth tourism refers to the practice by foreign nationals of coming to Canada to give birth for the sole purpose of securing Canadian citizenship for their child. While data suggest an increase in non-resident births in the past two decades, it is difficult to determine how many non-resident births are cases of birth tourism. A federal initiative linking health and immigration data has shed further light on the topic….

Source: Canadian Citizenship: Practice and Policy

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Halt of ‘Lost Canadians’ bill could mean citizenship for thousands born to parents with no ties to Canada

2025/01/22 Leave a comment

The current government needs to seek an extension (and allow enough time for a new government to pass needed legislation) and Judge Akbarali needs to acknowledge the political reality behind an extension and thus not enable such a vacuum.

The expected Conservative government should reintroduce the C-71 residency test approach but, crucially, require the residency be met within five years:

Ottawa’s failure to pass a bill granting citizenship to Lost Canadians – children born abroad to foreign-born Canadians – could lead to thousands of people whose parents have never been here automatically qualifying as citizens.

Bill C-71 was one of 26 pieces of legislation stopped in its tracks this month by the proroguing of Parliament.

It was introduced by the federal government last year after an Ontario court ruled that it is unconstitutional to deny citizenship to children born in another country to Canadians also born outside Canada.

The bill is meant to reverse a change by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in 2009 that stripped children of a Canadian parent born outside Canada of their automatic right to citizenship.

But now experts warn that the figure could be much higher. If the bill dies, thousands more children of Canadians born abroad, to those who have never been to Canada, would qualify for citizenship when the court ruling comes into effect in March, without added restrictions on who can be a citizen.

As well as restoring citizenship rights, Bill C-71 also limits who can pass on citizenship to ensure that Canadians born abroad, who have spent their entire lives outside Canada, would not be able to automatically confer the right to a Canadian passport onto their children. They would have to show, under the bill, that they were physically in Canada for at least 1,095 days (the equivalent of three years cumulatively) before their child’s birth.

Lawyer Sujit Choudhry, head of Hāki Chambers, who successfully brought the court challenge on behalf of his Lost Canadian clients, said Bill C-71 would have not only ended the second-generation cutoff but would have brought in “a substantial connection test.“

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said the death of the legislation, which she said was now likely, would mean that there are no safeguards requiring links to Canada….

Source: Halt of ‘Lost Canadians’ bill could mean citizenship for thousands born to parents with no ties to Canada

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Jamie Sarkonak: Good riddance to all the Liberal bills that Trudeau just culled

2025/01/08 Leave a comment

…Also dead is that bill that would have made thousands of people around the world eligible for Canadian citizenship.

Bill C-71, if you remember, would give the children of Canadians born abroad citizenship through descent, as long as the parents can establish a “substantial connection” to Canada. The guardrail wouldn’t be a secure one, since some judges don’t believe that there are any citizens who lack a connection to the country.

The bill’s proponents marketed it as a remedy to a rare problem that sometimes afflicts Canadian families who live abroad, such as military families. However, in trying to solve their problems, the bill would have made it much easier for citizenship to be obtained by the grandchildren of birth tourists (people who who travel to Canada to give birth, which secures Canadian citizenship for their child)…

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Good riddance to all the Liberal bills that Trudeau just culled

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Lost Canadians bill could create 115,000 more citizens, says parliamentary budget officer

2024/12/20 Leave a comment

Hard to know whether my and other critiques over the lack of numbers by the government resulted in PBO doing the needed analysis. Overall population approach versus my mix of the same Statistics Canada study and passport-based approach but responds to the need for estimated numbers. About three times higher than my upper estimate.

The one assumption that may be questionable is to assume that the current average cost of citizenship proofs would apply to all. If there had been a time limit of five years to meet the residency requirement, that would be reasonable. Without the time limit, the share of more complex residency over multiple years and longer periods, would increase the complexity and cost. The PBO itself notes that “the take-up rate may be impacted by different factors which will affect the cost of the billI,” one of which would be the time period under which residency occurred.

It would have been helpful had the PBO provided a breakdown of the 115,000 by separate groups rather than just the overall number (c and d together would form the largest group) as well as more clarity on assumption based numbers (e.g., population growth rate):

  • “a) the number of Canadians by descent born outside of Canada between February 15, 1977 and April 17, 1981 and who have derived their citizenship from a Canadian by descent parent and did not apply to retain their citizenship before the age of 28;
  • b) the children of these persons;
  • c) the children of Canadians by descent who were born after the coming into force of the first-generation limit on citizenship on April 17, 2009; and
  • d) the number of adoptees of Canadians by descent.”

Given the highly uncertain status of the current Parliament following the Freeland letter, questionable whether C-71 will progress but the PBO analysis provides a more informed basis for discussion:

A bill to reinstate rights for what are known as lost Canadians could create around 115,000 new citizens in the next five years, according to a report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

The report, published on Thursday, also estimates that it will cost the government $20.8-million over five years to implement the change, with $16.8-million coming in 2025-2026. The PBO presumes the law will come into force in April.

Bill C-71 was introduced by the government earlier this year after an Ontario court ruled it is unconstitutional to deny citizenship to children born overseas to Canadians also born outside the country.

The bill reverses a change by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in 2009 that stripped children of a Canadian parent born outside Canada of their automatic right to citizenship.

The 2009 change was designed to crack down on what Conservatives called “Canadians of convenience.” It followed an outcry after Canada spent more than $80-million to evacuate 15,000 Canadian citizens from Lebanon in 2006 during the Israel-Hezbollah war.

It has led to Canadians working abroad being denied the right to pass on their citizenship to their children. It has also meant that some “border babies” – born a few kilometres away in the United States – and Indigenous children born in communities straddling the border do not qualify for Canadian passports, despite living here.

The government, which has reduced its targets for the number of permanent residents to reduce pressure on housing and other services, has never publicly said how many new Canadians it expects the change in the law will create.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer based its 115,000 figure on estimates of the number of Canadians by descent living outside Canada and assumed that their numbers grow at the same rate as the Canadian population. The PBO included people who were adopted by a Canadian who could become citizens under the change.

“The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates a total net cost of the proposed amendments to the Citizenship Act to be $20.8-million over five years, beginning in 2025‑2026. The total number of persons that would be affected is estimated to be around 115,000 over the same period,” the report said.

Don Chapman, who has been campaigning for decades to restore rights to lost Canadians, said he did not think that all those gaining the right to citizenship under the bill who live abroad would opt to come to Canada. He said a lot of lost Canadians were already living in Canada, including children.

“It’s likely that most people who are eligible will not apply,” he said.

Source: Lost Canadians bill could create 115,000 more citizens, says parliamentary budget officer

PBO Report: Amending the Citizenship Act (2024) 

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    Questions persist as Ottawa prepares  Citizenship Act amendments

    2024/05/20 Leave a comment

    We should know soon enough.

    The legislation applying a first generation citizenship transmission limit included provisions for stateless provisions. However, IRCC citizenship operational statistics do not include a stateless category (standard table understandably is country of birth, not citizenship) and Statistics Canada does not capture how many stateless persons became citizens, which some certainly did.

    However, IRCC operational statistics show a monthly average of about 90 stateless permanent residents since the pandemic and presumably most will apply and become citizens given their interest in having the security that citizenship provides.

    The “lost Canadians” have mostly been found given successive lobbying and changes to the Citizenship Act to address gaps, even if the gaps were proven to the exaggerated as the number of total numbers of citizenship proofs were significant lower than the claims (22,000, 2007-22, data provided by IRCC).

    Will see if the government uses the same residency requirements for children caught by the first generation cut-off as for immigrants, or whether it reverts to previous complex and contentious retention provisions:

    The federal government is said to be preparing a bill to amend the Citizenship Act, but the details are still unclear – a concern for more than 3,500 stateless people who are in the country but have no access to critical services such as medical care.

    They include former Canadians who had their citizenship revoked due to now-repealed provisions of the act. These nationless people are known as “Lost Canadians.”

    The news comes after months of quiet on this issue. Last December, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled the act unconstitutionally creates two classes of Canadians and gave the government until June 19 to amend the Citizenship Act. The government said it wouldn’t challenge the decision but shared nothing further on the work being done.

    The court also found the act has uneven impacts on women, particularly under Section 3(3)(a) which prevents certain second-generation Canadian mothers who live abroad from passing citizenship to their children, unless they return to Canada to give birth.

    On Saturday, The Globe and Mail reported that the government has drafted a new bill to respond to the court order amid frustrations over the lack of progress on Bill S-245, which attempts to achieve the same goals. NDP member Jenny Kwan blamed Conservative filibuster tactics for causing the delay.

    A Commons committee completed its considerations of Bill S-245 nearly a year ago but an official website reports “no activity” on the file. Third and final reading of the bill in the Commons was scheduled in January but was cancelled, and there remains no new date for this.

    If passed into law, Bill S-245 would reinstate citizenship for those born abroad to Canadian parents between 1977 and 1981, though critics have argued it doesn’t go far enough to help tens of thousands who fall outside of that category.

    Word that the government is preparing its own legislation on the issue should bring hope to the families torn apart by the act’s outdated provisions, but questions remain about the possible continued use of a “substantial connection test.”

    The legislation may require the parents in these families to prove their ties to Canada to be able to pass down citizenship to children born abroad. The criteria for this test are not publicly known.

    Meanwhile, Lost Canadians whose fates have rested on the passing of Bill S-245 or similar legislation continue to be denied access to health care, education and employment as they await more information.

    The federal government should not delay in sharing the steps it intends to take to amend the Citizenship Act. A lack of transparency and communication about past changes to the legislation created this problem in the first place – and keeping the public in the dark will only prolong it.

    How citizenship is lost 

    The Citizenship Act has been amended several times since it was enacted in 1947, including provisions introduced in 1977 and 2009 that stripped certain born-abroad Canadians of their citizenship.

    Thousands lost their citizenship because they were born outside Canada or had lived abroad for six or more years. Dual citizenship holders at one point faced deportation, while those who possessed only Canadian citizenship became stateless. A 2007 CBC investigation revealed up to 200,000 people were impacted.

    Other amendments to the act have consistently failed to help several categories of Lost Canadians, including children born out of wedlock to Canadian servicemen and a foreign mother during wartime, and citizens born abroad between 1977 and 1981.

    Who “counts” as Canadian?

    The definition of Canadian citizenship is complicated. The first iteration of the Citizenship Act created two classes of “natural-born Canadians” who could hold citizenship: people born in Canada or on a Canadian ship or aircraft, and children born abroad to a Canadian-born father before 1947.

    When a 1977 amendment restored the legality of dual citizenship, those who had lost their Canadian status under the original legislation did not have it automatically reinstated.

    That 1977 amendment also introduced a new provision: under Section 8, born-abroad Canadians would have to apply to keep their citizenship before turning 28 years old – and would also need to have resided in Canada for the year preceding their application. Most affected Canadians were not informed of these requirements.

    In 2009, attempting to resolve these complications, the Stephen Harper government repealed Section 8 by passing Bill C-37. However, the amendment came with two caveats:

    • First, those who had lost citizenship under the now-repealed provisions would not have it restored automatically. These former Canadians could apply for citizenship, but with no guarantee of approval. (The repeal also did not apply to Lost Canadians born abroad between 1977 and 1981.)
    • Second, a born-abroad Canadian could pass down citizenship only to children born in Canada. Children born abroad to second- or subsequent-generation Canadians would need to apply for immigrant or refugee status to follow their parents back to Canada. If born in a country without a birthright citizenship law, the children would be stateless – a major human rights violation, according to the United Nations.

    Lost Canadians claim they were informed of the conditionality of their citizenship only when it was too late, such as when, after age 28, they applied for government pensions, driver’s licences, passport renewals or health care.

    That was the case for Pete Giesbrecht. Born in Mexico in 1979 to born-abroad Canadian parents, the family returned to Canada when he was seven years old. But when Giesbrecht applied to renew his passport in 2015 – after living nearly 30 years in Canada – he was told he faced possible deportation.

    Giesbrecht was officially stateless, without citizenship in another country to which he could be deported. When he reapplied for Canadian citizenship, he was required to prove his long-time connection to the country. After two years of uncertainty, Giesbrecht found a community of Lost Canadians to help advocate on his behalf and was re-granted citizenship.

    Ontario court highlights sex discrimination

    The Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling in December found the Citizenship Act confers “a lesser class of citizenship” to Canadians born outside the country and echoed criticisms of the second-generation cut-off rule’s unjust impact on women.

    Adoptees of foreign-born children, and second-generation, born-abroad Canadian mothers who gave birth abroad, are among those who have faced an undue burden. If a woman moved abroad for work and became pregnant in another country, she was required to return to Canada to give birth to pass down her citizenship.

    Victoria Maruyama, a Canadian who gave birth while working in Japan temporarily, was told she had to apply to sponsor her two children as immigrants to Canada. On both occasions, her applications were rejected.

    A few high-profile cases have succeeded in catching the attention – and intervention – of the immigration minister. One example is 16-year-old Olympic hopeful Erin Brooks, whose bid for citizenship has been successful. However, most families have been left dangling in uncertainty.

    What now?

    It’s not known whether the government will release more information about how it intends to modify the act before the June deadline.

    As far as we know, the latest news does not guarantee Canadian citizenship for all applicants. The expectation that families will be required to pass a substantial connection test to bring their children into Canada means there’s a possibility their applications will be denied.

    The lack of clarity leaves a cloud of doubt looming over Lost Canadians. How much longer will they have to wait?

    After so many years of confusion and oscillation, it seems imperative for the government to share in greater detail how it plans to move forward.

    Source: Questions persist as Ottawa prepares Citizenship Act amendments

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    Ottawa prepares bill to reinstate citizenship rights of ‘lost Canadians’

    2024/05/13 Leave a comment

    Hard to see that bill will make it through both houses by the June 19 deadline, likely meaning no restrictions pending the Bill becoming law:

    Ottawa is preparing a bill to reinstate rights for “lost Canadians” after an Ontario court ruled it is unconstitutional to deny citizenship to children born overseas to Canadians also born outside the country.

    The bill is expected to require a Canadian parent born abroad to demonstrate substantial ties to Canada before they can pass on citizenship to a child born outside Canada.

    The bill would reverse a change by Stephen Harper’s government in 2009 which stripped children of a Canadian parent born outside Canada of their automatic right to citizenship.

    The 2009 change was designed to crack down on what Conservatives called “Canadians of convenience.” It followed an outcry after Canada spent more than $80-million to evacuate 15,000 Canadian citizens from Lebanon in 2006 during the Israel-Hezbollah war….

    Source: Ottawa prepares bill to reinstate citizenship rights of ‘lost Canadians’

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    Feds won’t appeal landmark #citizenship ruling for ‘Lost Canadians’

    2024/01/23 Leave a comment

    sigh….

    Will see how the government intends to meet the required change, whether through the short-cut of S-245 or a separate bill that would follow established parliamentary committee hearings:

    The federal government will not appeal a court ruling that found part of Canada’s Citizenship Act to be unconstitutional.

    Last month, an Ontario Superior Court justice found the federal government violated Charter rights with its “second-generation cut-off” rule, which denies automatic citizenship to children born abroad if their Canadian parents were also born abroad.

    In an interview with CBC News Sunday, lawyer Sujit Choudhry confirmed federal government representatives informed him last week that there would be no appeal.

    Ottawa had 30 days to appeal the ruling — a deadline that passed on Thursday.

    “My clients are relieved. It’s been a long, hard fight,” said Choudhry, who is representing families affected by the law.

    Choudhry filed a constitutional challenge in December 2021, suing the federal government for denying his clients the right to transmit their citizenship to their foreign-born offspring.

    Critics have long said the law creates two tiers of citizenship, creating different rules for Canadians depending on whether they were born abroad.

    In her December ruling, Ontario Superior Court Justice Jasmine Akbarali agreed, writing that foreign-born Canadians born abroad hold “a lesser class of citizenship because, unlike Canadian-born citizens, they are unable to pass on Canadian citizenship by descent to their children born abroad.”

    The case is lauded as a win for up to 200,000 “Lost Canadians” — groups of people not considered citizens because of gaps or contested interpretations of citizenship law.

    The second-generation cut-off was created in 2009 as part of a crackdown by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government on Canadian citizens who lived permanently outside of the country. The move came in response to an $85-million evacuation of 15,000 Lebanese Canadians stranded in Beirut during the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

    In her ruling, Akbarali noted public anxiety over the Beirut evacuation, but wrote “the highest the evidence goes is to show that some people were concerned about it… there is no evidence to demonstrate that there are citizens without a connection to Canada, nor that if any such citizens exist, that their existence or citizenship creates any kind of problem.”

    Federal government must act

    The federal government has six months to repeal the second-generation cutoff in the law — a move that will require either fresh legislation, or potentially the passage of a bill already being debated.

    Senate Bill S-245 was amended in committee to remove the second-generation cut-off rule and replace it with a “substantial connections test” to pass on citizenship to the children of foreign-born Canadians who were born abroad.

    In her ruling, Akbarali described S-245 as a “head start” for Parliamentarians to amend the Citizenship Act law to make it fully constitutional within six months.

    How the federal government will respond is unclear. The office of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada Minister Marc Miller declined to comment.

    The court also ordered the federal government to grant citizenship to the four foreign-born children of three Canadian families involved in the case. Choudhry says they received certifications of their citizenship last week.

    “They’re beyond elated,” he said.

    Source: Feds won’t appeal landmark citizenship ruling for ‘Lost Canadians’

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    CBA: Restoring lost citizenship – S-245

    2023/04/05 Leave a comment

    Of note, like other witnesses, raising the first generation cut-off:

    The CBA’s  Immigration Law Section supports retroactively restoring citizenship to individuals who lost theirs under s. 8 of the Citizenship Act. In a letter to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, the Section makes two recommendations to improve Bill S-245, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians). The CBA Section appeared in front of the Committee to present its recommendations on March 27.

    Clarify the date of citizenship

    Until Parliament enacted Bill C-37 in 2009, individuals born outside Canada to Canadian citizen parents in the second or subsequent generations between February 15, 1977 and April 17, 2009 had until their 28th birthday to apply to retain their Canadian citizenship. After Bill C-37, the retention requirements were repealed but only for individuals who had not yet lost their citizenship.

    “The CBA Section supports eliminating the requirement to meet the retention requirements by age 28 and retroactively restoring citizenship to their date of birth. However, it is unclear if Bill S-245 will restore citizenship as of the date the Actcomes into effect, or retroactively to the date citizenship was lost. We recommend that this be clarified.”

    This is important, the letter adds, because it affects an individual’s ability to pass on citizenship to their children.

    Pre-empting potential Charter challenges

    S. 3(4) of the Citizenship Act inadvertently treats people differently based on their grandparent’s gender and marital status and Bill S-245 is liable to make that problem worse. The Section therefore recommends either amending S-245 or introducing a new bill to pre-empt a potential Charter challenge to s. 3(4) of the Citizenship Act.

    The second potential Charter issue is that current legislation does not allow people who live abroad but have significant ties to Canada and who are born in the second or subsequent generations to become Canadian citizens. “Parliament may wish to consider changes to the Citizenship Act, to permit those born in second and subsequent generations to also become Canadian citizens,” the CBA letter reads.

    Source: National – Restoring lost citizenship

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