The immigration department says it has temporarily paused the finalization of some new citizenship by descent applications after “a few dozen” people were told their issued citizenship certificates must be surrendered pending a review.
A statement issued late Wednesday says “the department is reviewing how this occurred” and is taking steps to ensure applications are assessed fairly and lawfully.
The statement says people who received citizenship certificates and came to Canada are still able to work while this review takes place.
The department says it is in the process of notifying affected people that they can’t use Canadian passports while their citizenship claims are reviewed.
A change to the law that took effect on Dec. 15, 2025 allowed people born before that date to claim Canadian citizenship if they could prove generation by generation that they have a direct Canadian ancestor.
That meant the passing down of citizenship ended after the first generation if a citizen born in Canada passed it onto their child born or adopted outside the country.
The first-generation limit created so-called “Lost Canadians” who had family connections to the country but could not themselves become citizens.
An unknown number of people who were approved for citizenship certificates received letters over the weekend saying they need to surrender their citizenship certificates while IRCC reviews their application.
The department also quietly updated its online document guide Wednesday for people claiming citizenship by descent through the law passed under Bill C-3.
Meanwhile, an immigration lawyer is pushing back on Immigration Minister Lena Diab’s claim that genealogical records — including those from third-party ancestry sites — are not sufficient evidence for a citizenship-by-descent claim.
Government practices and the department’s own document checklist do not state that records from sites like Ancestry.ca cannot be used as evidence for a claim.
The certificate surrender letters said that recipients either did not include original documents in the application or did not provide evidence to demonstrate attempts to access those original records.
Diab said “genealogy websites are not enough” during question period Tuesday, saying that people need to definitively prove Canadian lineage in each generation to get citizenship by descent.
Cedric Marin, an Ottawa immigration lawyer, said it’s shocking Diab would single out records from genealogical sites and points out government archives in Quebec and Ontario direct clients to partnered websites, including Ancestry.ca, for a wide variety of documents from the early 20th century and earlier.
“So a lot of these archives are putting their full collection, including the government, on Ancestry to be publicly accessible. So I think those letters were in part because maybe the source was missing,” Marin said.
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Genealogist Kendra Gaede said people using resources like Ancestry.ca for a claim still need to cite the original source of the document, such as a provincial archive, in order to follow the standards of tracking lineage.
“So it’s not that Ancestry is bad and that we shouldn’t be using it. It’s just that it’s another tool and used improperly, it’s not providing data the way that we should be representing it, like as a primary source of information,” Gaede explained.
Diab was asked about provincial archives directing people to sites like Ancestry and Family Search on Wednesday and said people must use authenticated documents.
“So for Canadian citizenship, we’ve been very clear from the beginning. Each applicant must link their ancestry generation to generation through verified, authenticated documents. So the genealogy records are certainly not sufficient whatsoever. Thanks,” Diab said.
The minister did not take followup questions.
Marin said he is not sure exactly what Diab means by “genealogy records,” but Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s own document checklist says they only require colour copies of documents for lineage evidence.
That checklist was modified on Wednesday, and it now says a certified baptismal record can be used in lieu of a birth certificate. Previously, the guidance was that a baptismal record could be used without the need for it to be certified. There is a list of valid documents for ancestors that may not have birth certificates if they were born before those were commonly issued.
A birth certificate is one of the preferred documents but other evidence can be used including census, baptismal and hospital records if a Canadian ancestor predates modern birth certificates.
Nearly 4,100 people have received proof of Canadian citizenship under the recent change, according to Immigration Department data.
IRCC held information sessions earlier this year with both the Canadian Bar Association and Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association to talk about how this process works.
The Canadian Press obtained videos of these sessions. In a March 18 information session a senior IRCC official from the citizenship and passports program told the lawyers that an application relying on records from Ancestry could be a challenge for a citizenship decision maker.
The official told the lawyers that the decision maker may go back to the applicant and ask for “a certified true copy” of a document like a birth record, because a family tree from a genealogy website is not sufficient by itself.
“But there is no like absolute requirement that it has to be a certified true copy. We can consider other forms of evidence as well that can support the application and assist the decision-maker in kind of reaching that balanced threshold,” the official said.
“Whether it’s school records, medical records, all of those could be helpful in supporting the application. But again, those alone wouldn’t likely be sufficient to reach the threshold of balance of probabilities.”
Anyone who has received a surrender letter after their citizenship certificate was issued will have a chance to provide further documentary evidence, IRCC says. People will get their citizenship certificates back if the review finds they are of Canadian lineage.
Still, Marin said it is “shocking” that this review is being done after people already received their citizenship certificates because IRCC officials are able to request more information and clarity during the initial approval process.
“Some people have already moved to Canada and not being told, ‘Hey, by the way, we are going to essentially suspend your Canadian citizenship until we make a decision to reanalyze your file.’ In my view, it’s quite shocking,” he said.
Marin said his firm is representing upwards of 150 people with citizenship by descent claims, which includes some families. He hired Gaede as an in-house genealogist earlier this year due to the demand after previously contracting her services.
He said none of his clients have received surrender letters.
Gaede said the government should have taken more time to set up what their genealogical proof standards looked like before beginning this review of documents that have been issued.
“So the rubber stamping that seems to be happening was a little terrifying to me and that’s why I’m glad they’re doing this now, because they need to follow those guidelines,” she said.
“They need (to) broadcast, they need (to) make it clear to the people doing this work that the standard is that much higher.”
Gaede added that she wants the rules and government standards to be clearly outlined, because not everyone who is eligible for citizenship under this law is able to afford a lawyer or genealogist to handle their application.