TORONTO — Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada received 12,430 applications and granted 1,480 of them under a new law that took effect on Dec. 15, 2025, allowing people with ancestral ties to claim Canadian citizenship. The agency processed 6,280 applications between that date and Jan. 31, 2026.

The law extends eligibility beyond the children of Canadians to anyone who can prove an ancestral tie to the country. Under its terms, descendants are automatically considered Canadian, and the application process is for proof of citizenship. Applicants must trace their ancestry to a parental relative who became a Canadian citizen on or after Jan. 1, 1947, the date the first Canadian Citizenship Act was introduced. The law does not specify a maximum ancestral generation for eligibility, and it is possible that millions of Americans could qualify. Going forward, Canadian parents must have lived in Canada for more than 1,095 days to pass on citizenship to their children.

The change followed an Ontario court ruling that found limiting citizenship rights to only the first generation was unconstitutional. The new framework addresses generations of "lost Canadians" born after earlier Canadian law made it difficult for Canadians to pass citizenship to children born in the United States. More than a million French-Canadians moved from Canada to the New England region of the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, mostly to work in mills or on farms.

The proof of citizenship application fee is C$75, equivalent to US$55 and £40, but the total cost of applying, including genealogist fees, records fees, and lawyers, can reach into the thousands of dollars. Applicants have had to search historic records such as census reports, baptismal records, and birth certificates to prove their ties to Canada. Birth certificates in Quebec were not standardized until the 1990s, and many earlier births were recorded by parish baptismal certificates written in French in old-fashioned script. Family surnames also often changed when immigrants anglicized their names, with Desjardins becoming Gardner and Bonenfant becoming Goodchild. "Each application is reviewed on a case-by-case basis to determine eligibility," a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said, adding that applicants must provide official documents and cannot use online genealogy sites as sole proof of eligibility.

Montreal genealogist Ryan Légère is considering hiring an employee due to increased workloads from citizenship applications. "What was kind of like a side business has turned into full time," Légère said. "Many institutions appear to be overwhelmed, understaffed, and not fully prepared for the volume of requests received over the past few months," he said.

Joe Boucher, whose parents were both of French-Canadian descent and spoke French with each other, is in the process of applying for proof of Canadian citizenship. "We sort of feel the ground shifting under our feet a little bit these days," Boucher said. "I have zero connection to any of that. My ancestors arrived in Canada 400 years ago and spent generations creating communities and cultivating the land in Quebec and Acadie. This is the family I know and this is in large part who I am," he said.