Canada Amends Its Citizenship Law, Allows Descendants of Canadians To Apply For Citizenship

by CrownHeights.info

Are you a “Lost Canadian”?

Before December 15th, 2025, Canada’s Citizenship Act limited the passing on of citizenship to the first-generation for people born or adopted abroad. This meant that a Canadian citizen could only pass on citizenship to or access a direct grant of citizenship for a child born or adopted outside Canada if the parent was either born or naturalized in Canada before the child’s birth or adoption. On December 15th of last year, that all changed.

Going back to December 19th, 2023, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice found that parts of the Citizenship Act relating to the first-generation limit to citizenship by descent were unconstitutional.

On June 5, 2025, the government introduced Bill C-3, An Act to Amend the Citizenship Act (2025), to extend citizenship by descent beyond the first-generation in a way that is more inclusive and protects the value of Canadian citizenship. The bill received royal assent on November 20, 2025, and came into effect on December 15th, 2025. This means that Canada now recognizes a whole new class of Canadian decedents as eligible citizens.

With the coming into effect of this bill, people who automatically became Canadian citizens under the new law can apply to get proof of Canadian citizenship, while people adopted abroad before December 15, 2025, by a Canadian parent born or adopted abroad can apply for Canadian citizenship for an adopted child. People born or adopted abroad on or after December 15, 2025, to a Canadian parent also born or adopted abroad must demonstrate that their Canadian parent has spent three years in Canada when applying for proof of Canadian citizenship.

Who are these “Lost Canadian” people who suddenly became Canadian citizens?

Anyone who is born to a second-generation Canadian, meaning your parents parents were Canadians at the time of your birth or adoption, is now eligible to be a Canadian citizen.

For those people that this applies to, you can now proudly celebrate Canada Day on July 1st.