When Ottawa rewrote one of the most consequential sections of Canada’s Citizenship Act in late 2025, federal officials told Parliament the change would generate manageable demand.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) told a Senate committee on November 17, 2025, that it expected the number of people affected to land in the tens of thousands over time, not hundreds of thousands.
The department pointed to past amendments that corrected the status of earlier groups of Lost Canadians and noted that none of those changes had produced an application surge.
IRCC added that it believed its existing dedicated citizenship team had the capacity to handle the incoming proof of citizenship files.
The law took effect on December 15, 2025.
Less than nine months later, approximately 136,000 people are sitting in the proof of citizenship queue, according to data IRCC published on September 3, 2026.
A new applicant is now told to expect a wait of roughly 33 months before receiving a decision.
That is nearly three years to obtain a document confirming a citizenship status that, for most of these applicants, already exists by operation of law.
The gap between what the government anticipated and what has actually unfolded is now too large to attribute to normal forecasting error.
Table of Contents
What Unexpected Problem Has Canada’s New Citizenship Law Created?
The problem is not a legal one. The Act to Amend the Citizenship Act, commonly known during its passage as Bill C-3, accomplished exactly what Parliament intended.
It removed an unconstitutional restriction that had prevented Canadian citizenship from passing beyond the first generation born or adopted outside Canada.
The problem is administrative. IRCC’s proof of citizenship inventory stood at roughly 40,400 people around December 2025, when the law came into force.
By September 2026, that inventory had climbed to approximately 136,000.
The estimated processing time for a new citizenship certificate application has followed the inventory upward: from roughly 9 months in December 2025 to approximately 12 months in May 2026, approximately 19 months in July 2026, approximately 25 months in August 2026, and approximately 33 months in September 2026.
The eight-month jump between August and September is the steepest single-month increase in this category since the law took effect.
Not every person in the 136,000-strong queue is necessarily there because of the amended citizenship-by-descent rules.
IRCC’s proof of citizenship stream also includes other applicants, such as naturalized citizens who need replacement certificates.
But the queue stood at about 40,400 shortly before the law changed and has since more than tripled to approximately 136,000.
While IRCC has not published a breakdown showing how many pending files are directly tied to the amended citizenship-by-descent provisions, the timing and subsequent surge in ancestry-based applications indicate that the new rules are a major driver of the growth.
Proof Of Citizenship Processing Time And Queue Growth In 2026
| Month | Processing Time | People In Queue |
| December 2025 | ~9 months | ~40,400 |
| January 2026 | ~10 months | ~42,400 |
| May 2026 | ~12 months | ~70,400 |
| June 2026 | ~15 months | ~82,000 |
| July 2026 | ~19 months | ~99,500 |
| August 2026 | ~25 months | ~121,800 |
| September 2026 | ~33 months | ~136,000 |
What Did Ottawa Expect Before The Law Took Effect?
The federal government’s own projections stand in stark contrast to the numbers above.
In an opening statement to the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs on November 17, 2025, Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab said the government expected applications in the tens of thousands over time, not hundreds of thousands.
She cited the experience with previous amendments in 2009 and 2015, noting that roughly 20,000 people applied for proof of citizenship after those changes and that no surge materialized in either case.
IRCC’s briefing materials for the same committee appearance reinforced that position.
The department disclosed that between January 2024 and July 2025, it had received just over 4,200 applications from individuals affected by the first-generation limit under an interim measure.
IRCC explicitly stated that it did not use the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s December 2024 estimate of approximately 115,000 affected individuals to set its own volume projections, citing uncertainty in that report, yet by January 2026 the queue had already climbed to roughly 42,400.
In a separate October 2, 2025, briefing for the House of Commons committee, IRCC repeated the same language: tens of thousands, no surge, and sufficient existing capacity.
As recently as late May 2026, when IRCC’s own data showed the processing time had already climbed to approximately 12 months, a department spokesperson told CBC News that IRCC had not seen a significant increase in the volume of proof of citizenship applications since the law changed and had not assigned additional staff to process them.
At that time, the queue had already climbed from about 40,400 to roughly 70,400, and within weeks it would surge past 82,000 in June.
By September 2026, the queue reached approximately 136,000, with a processing time approaching three years.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer had estimated that roughly 115,000 people could be affected by the legislative amendments, although IRCC declined to use that estimate because of uncertainty around the underlying population.
That figure is not directly comparable with today’s 136,000-file proof of citizenship inventory, which includes applicants unrelated to the new law.
Who Became Canadian Under The Amended Citizenship Act?
The amended Citizenship Act draws a clear line at its coming-into-force date of December 15, 2025.
For people born outside Canada before that date, the amended law removed the first-generation limit retroactively in affected cases.
People who would have been Canadian citizens if not for that limit or certain outdated provisions generally became citizens automatically by operation of law.
These individuals do not apply to become citizens. They already are citizens.
What they apply for is proof of citizenship in the form of a citizenship certificate, which is the official document confirming their status.
People adopted abroad are treated differently.
Eligible people adopted outside Canada before December 15, 2025, by Canadian parents affected by the former first-generation limit can apply for a direct grant of citizenship for an adopted person rather than becoming citizens automatically solely because of the amendment.
For people born outside Canada on or after December 15, 2025, the rules work differently.
Citizenship beyond the first generation abroad can still pass down if the Canadian parent who was also born abroad accumulated at least 1,095 days of physical presence in Canada before the child’s birth.
A similar substantial connection requirement applies to the direct citizenship grant for qualifying foreign adoptions.
The distinction matters because people born before December 15, 2025, face no physical presence requirement at all.
The law simply recognizes what their status should have been all along.
Can Someone With A Canadian Grandparent Or Great-Grandparent Be Canadian?
Potentially, but not automatically in every case. Having distant Canadian ancestry alone does not make someone eligible, as IRCC has stated publicly.
What matters is whether a complete, unbroken chain of citizenship can be traced from the applicant back through each generation to a person who was Canadian under the applicable law at the relevant time.
Consider someone born in the United States in 2011 whose mother was also born in the United States to a Canadian-born parent.
Under the rules then in effect, the child was in the second generation born abroad and was generally prevented from acquiring citizenship because of the first-generation limit.
Under the amended Citizenship Act, that person may now be recognized as a Canadian citizen retroactive to birth, provided the citizenship and parent-child chain are established.
But eligibility depends on the details: whether the Canadian-born ancestor was actually a citizen under the citizenship rules in force at the time, whether citizenship was retained or lost through prior legislative changes, and whether every link in the generational chain holds up.
The chain can extend beyond grandparents to great-grandparents or further, but only if each link meets the legal requirements applicable to that generation.
Applicants whose ancestors left Canada before 1947, when Canadian citizenship did not exist as a separate legal status, face an additional layer of complexity.
Those ancestors were British subjects, and their transition to Canadian citizenship on January 1, 1947, depended on criteria such as domicile and ordinary residence in Canada.
IRCC now requires that each generation be supported by authentic records from the relevant original authority, such as a provincial vital statistics office, not genealogy website printouts alone.
Why Are So Many Americans Applying For Canadian Citizenship?
The United States has a large population of people with Canadian ancestry, reflecting generations of cross-border migration.
Waves of Canadian emigration to the United States throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly from Quebec and the Maritime provinces, produced millions of descendants who are now spread across New England, the Great Lakes states, and beyond.
CBC News reported in late May 2026 that of the 4,075 citizenship certificates IRCC had issued under the amended citizenship-by-descent provisions between December 15, 2025, and March 31, 2026, approximately half went to people born in the United States.
People born in 44 countries received certificates under the new provisions during that period, and people born in 118 countries received them under the pre-existing criteria.
CBC also reported on September 10, 2026, that Canadian archives have been deluged with requests for the vital records needed to prove lineage, with applicants sometimes tracing their ancestry back seven or eight generations.
Quebec’s Directeur de l’état civil reported receiving 3,800 requests from people outside Canada since January 2026 for ancestry documents.
Immigration lawyers have said current U.S. political uncertainty and strained Canada-U.S. relations are among the factors driving American interest, although eligibility itself comes from Canadian citizenship law.
Immigration lawyers in multiple Canadian cities have reported a sharp increase in inquiries and filings from American clients tracing Canadian lineage.
Do These New Citizens Count Toward Canada’s Immigration Targets?
No, Canada’s annual immigration levels plan governs the admission of new permanent residents. People recognized as citizens by descent are not immigrants.
They are Canadian citizens who happen to live abroad.
Their recognition under the amended Citizenship Act does not count toward the annual permanent resident admissions targets that IRCC sets through its levels plan.
This is one of the key reasons the growth in this queue does not appear in the immigration statistics that are most frequently reported.
It sits entirely within the citizenship program, not the immigration program, even though its implications overlap.
Could These New Citizens Move To Canada?
Yes, in principle. Canadian citizens have the constitutional right under Section 6 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to enter, remain in, and leave Canada.
Once a person holds a valid citizenship certificate, they can apply for a Canadian passport and relocate to Canada at any time.
In practice, the 33-month processing time can still become a significant practical barrier.
A citizenship certificate is generally needed to obtain a Canadian passport for someone born abroad and may also be required to prove citizenship when applying for a Social Insurance Number, certain jobs, pensions or other services.
Whether large numbers of newly recognized citizens will actually move to Canada is unknown.
The IRCC Senate briefing acknowledged that many people may apply simply to secure their status without any intention of relocating.
Others may seek a Canadian passport as a travel document or as a form of security.
It would be inaccurate to assume that all or most of the 136,000 people in the queue plan to move to Canada.
But it would also be inaccurate to assume that none of them will.
The honest answer is that Canada does not know, and until the applications are processed and the new citizens make their individual decisions, the scale of any eventual relocation remains speculative.
Can These Citizens Immediately Claim Canadian Benefits?
Citizenship alone does not automatically entitle a person to Canadian public benefits.
Most federal and provincial benefit programs have their own eligibility criteria, and residency in Canada is almost always one of them.
A person living in the United States who obtains a Canadian citizenship certificate does not, by that act alone, become eligible for Canadian public health insurance, the Canada Child Benefit, Old Age Security, or provincial social assistance.
Provincial and territorial health plans generally require a person to establish residence and satisfy the applicable province’s eligibility rules; waiting-period rules vary by jurisdiction.
Federal programs also have their own requirements.
The Canada Child Benefit generally requires Canadian residency for tax purposes along with other eligibility conditions, while Old Age Security has separate age, legal-status, and Canadian-residence-history requirements.
Citizens abroad also remain subject to the tax laws of the country where they actually live.
Canada, unlike the United States, generally does not tax its citizens on worldwide income unless those citizens are tax residents of Canada.
A person who obtains a Canadian citizenship certificate but continues to live in another country will not face Canadian tax obligations solely because of the citizenship recognition.
Why Is It Taking Nearly Three Years To Get Proof Of Citizenship?
The processing time reflects a collision between surging demand and a system that was never built for this volume.
IRCC’s proof of citizenship function was historically a low-volume administrative stream, processing a few tens of thousands of applications at any given time.
The department sized its dedicated citizenship team accordingly.
When the amended law took effect on December 15, 2025, application volumes began climbing almost immediately, as early 2026 processing data already showed.
In June 2026, IRCC also paused finalization of affected citizenship-by-descent files while it conducted a broader review of roughly 6,500 applications.
Separately, about 100 citizenship certificates that had already been issued were flagged over potentially insufficient supporting documentation.
IRCC completed the broader 6,500-file review on June 30 and resumed finalizations, as the July 2026 processing update later reflected, although some individual certificate reviews continued afterward.
Meanwhile, the document requirements for citizenship-by-descent applications are inherently more complex than standard proof of citizenship filings.
Each application may require evidence tracing the generational chain to a qualifying Canadian ancestor using authentic, reliable and verifiable records issued by the authorities that created or maintain those records.
Third-party genealogy records alone are not sufficient.
For families whose ancestors left Canada generations ago, assembling that evidence trail can involve multiple provincial vital statistics offices, church records, and archival searches, often spanning different eras of record-keeping.
IRCC’s September 2026 processing estimate is forward-looking and factors in the current inventory and the number of applications the department expects to process each month.
Because the estimate is forward-looking, changes in expected intake, processing capacity and case complexity can cause the published figure to move sharply from one monthly update to the next.
For comparison, the citizenship grant queue for permanent residents becoming citizens through naturalization stands at roughly 327,100 people but carries a processing time of approximately 12 months.
The comparison shows that inventory size alone does not determine processing time; staffing, workflow, case complexity and service standards also matter.
Is There A Language Test, Citizenship Test, Or Security Check For Citizens By Descent?
No language test and no citizenship knowledge test apply to people who are already citizens by operation of law and are simply applying for proof of that status.
The citizenship test and language requirements apply to the naturalization process, which is the path permanent residents follow to become Canadian citizens for the first time.
Citizenship by descent is a fundamentally different legal concept.
The person is already a citizen; IRCC’s role is to verify the claim and issue the confirming document.
Citizenship by descent also does not involve the security or criminality screening required in some immigration and naturalization processes.
There is no oath of citizenship, no in-person ceremony, and no Canadian residence requirement for a proof of citizenship application.
IRCC does, however, verify supporting documents and can request additional evidence when more information is needed to establish the citizenship claim.
Incomplete paper applications are returned with instructions to resubmit the missing information, while online applicants are notified through their IRCC account if their application is incomplete
Is Urgent Processing Available For Citizenship Certificates?
IRCC does offer an urgent processing pathway for proof of citizenship applications, but it is limited to a narrow set of circumstances.
Qualifying situations include applicants who need the certificate to facilitate studies in Canada, employment situations, or certain family emergencies.
Applicants must submit a formal urgent processing request with supporting documentation demonstrating the time-sensitive need.
Qualifying for urgent processing does not guarantee that the underlying citizenship claim will be approved, only that the file will be reviewed faster.
There is no general paid expedite option for routine proof of citizenship applications.
IRCC spokesperson Briannah Dale told media on September 10, 2026, that the department is continuing to monitor application trends and is implementing operational measures to respond to increased demand.
Those measures include triaging applications, enhancing intake processes, training and onboarding additional staff, and refining workload management practices.
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said the government needs to ensure IRCC has the resources to address what she called a growing crisis, noting the department’s planned workforce reductions.
IRCC’s own 2024-25 departmental results report says its workforce adjustment is expected to reduce approximately 3,300 positions between 2025-26 and 2027-28.
Immigration lawyers, as reported by CBC News, warned that the growing backlog could eventually end up before the Federal Court and that applicants stuck in the queue could seek writs of mandamus to force the department to make decisions within a reasonable time.
The legal theory behind such challenges would rest on the argument that a citizen has a right to proof of their status and that an indefinite wait for a confirmation document effectively denies them the practical exercise of that right.
The broader question has also shifted.
When Parliament debated the law in 2025, the central concern was whether expanded citizenship by descent would create a surge in applications.
IRCC said it would not. The September 2026 processing data strongly suggests it did.
The question now is not whether the surge happened, but whether IRCC has the operational capacity and political mandate to clear a rapidly growing proof of citizenship inventory that already stands at approximately 136,000 applications and shows no sign of levelling off.
If the current trajectory continues, Canada will face a mounting contradiction: a law designed to restore citizenship rights to people who were unconstitutionally excluded, paired with an administrative system that cannot confirm those rights within any reasonable timeframe.
How Ottawa resolves that contradiction in the coming months will determine whether the amended Citizenship Act delivers on its promise or becomes a case study in legislative ambition outpacing institutional readiness.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How long does it take to get a Canadian citizenship certificate in September 2026?
IRCC’s published processing time for a proof of Canadian citizenship certificate rose to approximately 33 months as of its September 3, 2026, update, up from approximately 25 months in August.
This is a forward-looking estimate, not a guaranteed timeline, and individual processing times can vary based on the complexity of the application and the completeness of the supporting documents.
Applicants living outside Canada and the United States may need to add an additional 3 to 4 months to account for mailing time through a Canadian embassy, high commission, or consulate.
Is a Canadian citizenship certificate the same as a grant of citizenship?
No, and the distinction carries significant practical consequences.
A citizenship certificate, formally called proof of citizenship, is a document confirming that a person is already a Canadian citizen.
It is used by citizens by descent and other people whose citizenship exists by operation of law.
A grant of citizenship is the naturalization process through which a permanent resident becomes a Canadian citizen for the first time, which involves meeting residency, language, and knowledge test requirements.
The two applications sit in separate processing queues at IRCC.
Citizenship grants are currently processing at approximately 12 months, with roughly 327,100 people waiting, while proof of citizenship is at approximately 33 months, with roughly 136,000 waiting.
Do newly recognized Canadian citizens living abroad have to pay Canadian taxes?
Not solely because of the citizenship recognition. Canada generally taxes individuals based on residency, not citizenship.
A person living in the United States or another country who obtains a Canadian citizenship certificate but does not establish tax residency in Canada will not owe Canadian income tax on that basis alone.
This differs from the U.S. approach, where American citizens are taxed on worldwide income regardless of where they live.
Citizens who relocate to Canada would become Canadian tax residents and would be subject to Canadian tax rules from that point forward.
Can someone whose Canadian ancestor left Canada before 1947 still qualify?
Potentially, but the evidentiary path is more complex. Canadian citizenship as a distinct legal status only came into existence on January 1, 1947, when the first Canadian Citizenship Act took effect.
Before that date, Canadians were British subjects. Whether a pre-1947 ancestor became a Canadian citizen on that date depends on factors such as domicile and ordinary residence in Canada at the time.
Proving those facts may require census records, land deeds, church records, or other archival material beyond a standard birth certificate.
Applicants tracing lineage through pre-1947 ancestors should anticipate additional documentary requirements and consider seeking professional guidance.
What can applicants do if the processing delay prevents them from working, studying, or travelling?
IRCC offers an urgent processing pathway for applicants who can demonstrate a documented, time-sensitive need.
Qualifying circumstances include upcoming study enrollment in Canada, employment situations, and certain family emergencies. There is no general paid expedite option.
Applicants facing exceptionally prolonged delays may seek a writ of mandamus asking the Federal Court to compel IRCC to process their application. Whether mandamus is granted depends on the circumstances of the case, including whether IRCC has a legal duty to act and whether the delay has become unreasonable.
That legal route involves its own costs and timelines, and applicants considering it should consult an immigration lawyer.
Fact-Checked By: Immigration News Canada editorial team. All processing times, queue figures, legal provisions, and government statements cited in this article have been verified against IRCC’s official processing times tool (September 3, 2026 update), parliamentary committee briefing materials published on canada.ca, the Citizenship Act as amended by Bill C-3, and reporting from CBC News (September 10, 2026; May 30, 2026; March 9, 2026).
Disclaimer: This article is published for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Citizenship eligibility depends on individual circumstances, applicable historical legislation, and documentary evidence. Readers considering an application for proof of Canadian citizenship should consult a qualified immigration professional.
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