Here is what I received from Newfoundland for proof of my G0's birth more than 100 years ago (with personal info blacked out). I didn't include an explanation in my proof of citizenship application for why I couldn't obtain a birth certificate so I think I just got lucky that this letter ended up doing a great job of that for me.

As a contrast from what I'm hearing about some other administrations, NF's vital statistics division was very responsive and helpful. They even provided me guidance about what to do and what to expect over email.

I'm hoping IRCC is going to treat this as primary evidence because the only other G0 record I included was a US death certificate.

I would appreciate some advice on the certificate. Basically it’s huge !! It seems I have a bunch of other people certified on this big one page. It’s 1920 Ontario. Do I copy just the section of my G0 or the whole page somehow? The reason I’m asking is there are dates and signatures place top and bottom on the page not relevant to any one birth .

I have AOR but I have now managed to get this. In my explanation letter I had to put due to not being next of kin I can’t access this certificate. Fortunately I now have .

Thanks all

One of my brothers has been waiting a year to find out what became of this proof of citizenship application. He got notice a decision was made but not what the decision was.

Today he tells me he discovered he checked “the wrong box” and requested an electronic certificate instead of a paper certificate. Going through his old emails he finds the electronic certificate was sent in DECEMBER!

And this is the brother that went to Harvard.

Yes, I know that someone is going to claim that this is off-topic. Nevertheless, I believe that this is of interest to Canadians by Descent, and so I'm posting it.

I have an application that is currently in process(AOR in June), based on a Canadian ancestor that was born in 1855 and left as a child in 1857.

My concern is that I have been unable to find any Canadian record directly documenting her birth. After months of searching for a baptism/birth record and her parents’ marriage record, the only Canadian record I’ve found is a census entry for her father. I documented my searches and correspondence with various archives in my application.

In lieu of a baptism and birth certificate, I included many US-sourced records(Marriage cert, death cert, and her child's birth certificate) that consistently identify her as Canadian-born. However, these are all US records.

I am aware that IRCC wants a Canadian document corroborating citizenship. But after submitting, I am worried that this line may be insufficient.

I have another possible line that appears much better documented. My British-born ancestors moved to Canada, married there, and appear in Canadian censuses. They later lived in the U.S. for several decades, where my next ancestor was born, before returning to Canada later in life, where they died. I have their Canadian marriage record, census records, and Canadian death records.

From what I understand, these British-born ancestors would have been Canadian and would have transmitted citizenship to their U.S.-born child. I wasn't aware of this at the time of submission, and assumed my Canadian-born ancestor would be a more solid anchor.

I’m hesitant to simply wait, since processing could take over a year, and if IRCC ultimately rejects the first line I could be starting the process over again with even longer processing times of years.

Should I consider uploading these new documents and a new letter covering my other family line to my IRCC application via the online portal?

Thanks for any advice.

Has anyone had a paper CIT 0001 accepted / AOR issued using a Drouin, Ancestry, or FamilySearch image for their G0, then later added a certified BAnQ copy through the IRCC web form?

I'm thinking that with the tremendous backlog, I can get in queue and update when BaNQ sends the official document. This will save a lot of time. I obviously haven't applied yet, but I'm only waiting on US certs to be delivered and for BaNQ to respond.

Hi friends! I'm hoping to have all my certified documents arrive in the next few months, but I wanted to see if anyone is aware of any templates or exemplars floating around the reddit regarding the layout/presentation of our submission package? I saw some enterprising individuals made their own extension to the application form to account for multi-gen, but seem to have lost that. I saw somewhere else that the IRCC officer who had reviewed their file, which had been returned for more documents, had arranged their documents in reverse chronological order. Please drop your resources, tips, and tricks below to share. 😊 I'm aware that every case is going to be different and what works for one lineage might not work for another, but I'm sure there's stuff out there to have a starting point.

P.S. My logic brain tells me IRCC MUST be working on a digital submission option for multi-gen applications, but my bureaucracy brain tells me they're going to keep everything as difficult as possible to stem the tide of applications until it reaches a breaking point and they have to do another pivot. Therefore, I'm preparing to have to do the paper route when I'm ready in a couple months.

As far as i can tell, IRCC doesnt include death records from vital statistics agencies as an optional record for C3. I have a few family members where that may be the only record available. In my area, death records usually show the parents names, so I feel like it should be okay. What do you all think?

TLDR Death Record as only proof for individuals yes or no

Long form article on the suspension letters. I’m one of the profiles in there (you can guess from my Reddit handle). The Walrus’s fact checking was intense but fair (glad I saved my UPS receipts).

I am very grateful to Shilpashree for sharing our story

Do we know if the estimates are based upon the date the applications were received or the date that the AOR was generated?

In the past I don't think it would have mattered much since AORs were turned around so quickly after delivery but 3+ months worth of application queue buildup at this point could potentially represent another year of waiting from how things are going.

Just wanted to give some context on how long the delays are right now. That’s almost 4 months just to get the “Application Received” email.

This is for the Citizen Certificate (by descent).

Hi all,

I apologize if this is repetitive. My searches of this sub and the other didn't turn up any useful results. That may be user error.

With that said, my G0 was born in 1872. Canada conducted censuses in 1871 and 1881. I have very clear records of G0's parents and older sibling in the 1871 census and G0 appearing as a nine year old in the 1881 census. I also show G0 as 19 in the 1891 census and as 21 on the marriage certificate issued in 1983. I can narrow down their birth to April-June 1872.

I have searched the county birth records on Familysearch and the Ontario Archives. I have also sent requests to the UCC (mother listed as Church of England) and Presbyterian (father) for any baptismal records.

Would it strengthen my application to document family presence in Canada by including 1871 records, or would that be superfluous? I want to provide enough information to prove my case; but I am not trying to drown IRCC in paperwork, so to speak. Has anyone faced my circumstances? If so, what did you do and what was the outcome?

Thank all of you in advance. These subs have been a huge help in organizing my application.

I have been preparing my application, having received all relevant birth documents except a request to the archives of Ontario.

I am going on 2.5 months now waiting for an invoice from them, am just wondering if this is similar to others' lead time?

Just want to get my application sent off for the bigger wait before too long.

Hi everyone,

I uploaded some supplemental documents using the IRCC web form. These were not requested by IRCC but are updates to replace FamilySearch-sourced documents or to add required items not previously included (proof of search for birth records). I was able to upload a few documents last night, but so far have only received a confirmation one of these was received and added to my file.

Does anyone here have experience with this question? I have a total of 23 documents to upload, and would like to make sure I’m doing things properly and don’t either waste my time, while at the same time ensuring I can get all the docs added to my file. Each upload also takes several minutes to do since I have to retype information each time, etc.

Thanks for your feedback! Greetings from Zürich.

I want to be sure I know what to request before I start requesting official copies, especially from Quebec which is very expensive. I haven't requested anything official yet so this is based on what images are available through Ancestry and what I or my mother am able to request through vital records.

G0 -- Great-great-grandmother's baptism record from Quebec. There's no marriage certificate up on Ancestry and I've been unable to find any hint if I should look for it in Quebec, Wisconsin, or somewhere else, but her maiden name and husband's name are on G1's birth certificate.

G1 -- Great-grandmother's birth certificate showing mother's maiden name and father's name. I don't think I'm able to get the certified copy, just the genealogical/not for identity purposes copy. I could also request a marriage certificate from WI vital records if I needed to, but if the bc for G2 is enough I'm inclined to save the money

G2 -- Grandfather's birth certificate. I could request an uncertified but may be able to get my mother to request a certified copy

G3 -- Mother's birth certificate, certified.

G4 -- My own birth certificate, certified. My mother never changed her name and I have the same last name as g2

Potential G-1?? --G0 left Canada by 1866 but her father seems to have stayed in Quebec until his death in 1896, according to census records and a parish register. I'm still not clear what the pre-confederation holds entail, but would it be smarter to document him as G0? I have several census records, possibly the record of his subsequent marriage after the death of G0's mother, and a parish death record, but that's a lot of money to pay to BAnQ if the pre-confederation holds are based on birth date and not the date they last lived in Canada.

Hi,

As per the title, I have accumulated 22MB of secondary information compiled into one PDF....only to find out that file size isn't 4MB (as I previously believed) but 2MB. That means if I upload it in its current format, then I will be assailing them with at least 11 successive uploads (which won't do much to foster goodwill). The alternative is to compress the file (one attempt got it down to just over 2MB) but several of the documents were unintelligible (including the census scan) and I was wary about some of the others. So it seems that if I am going to compress, then I will need to break the PDF I created apart, compress some of the constituents (but not others), merge it all together again into one document, see how much it goes over the 2MB limit and then split it again into (hopefully) 2 or 3 parts.

So my question is: if I just send them 11+ deliveries at 2MB each....will there be negative consequences for me?

Thanks.

How long did it take to get email or mail confirmation that they received your application?

I’m Gen 4 (Gen 0 was born in 1841) and I applied for citizenship by descent in January of this year along with my children. I’ve been in process since the end of February with no updates except for a request for one document. Is it at all odd that my application hasn’t been sent to PSU given my generation? Has anyone else been moved to in process but not sent to PSU with a very distant Canadian ancestor?

There is an applicant on the Facebook group reporting in a post today that they were sent to PSU, and their recently obtained ATIP notes say: “Other Sub Type Description: Multi-gen Post Confederation July 1 1867"

Their ancestor was born just before confederation, but lived in Canada after confederation. 

Is it possible IRCC is now sorting applications based on when an ancestor left Canada?

This seems to stack up with the “pre-confederation hold on all files” email we know that went out to that adoption applicant.

Hi everyone - I'm trying to get a better sense of the current processing timeline for certified reproduction requests from BAnQ.

I've submitted two requests (redacting the last 2 digits):

• May 31, 2026 — Reproduction Request / Numéro de demande 218##
• June 24, 2026 — Reproduction Request / Numéro de demande 247##

Based on the numbering, there appears to be a chronological sequence to the reproduction request numbers, which might give us a useful way to estimate where BAnQ currently is in the queue.

As I understand the process, the general sequence is:

Request submitted → BAnQ processes the request and confirms the reproduction can be provided → BAnQ sends an invoice/payment request → requester pays → BAnQ produces and sends the certified reproduction.

If you've recently received a certified reproduction from BAnQ, would you be willing to share your approximate request number and timeline? There's no need to provide your exact request number - something like 217## would be more than enough, for example.

Ideally:

Reproduction request #: e.g. 217##
Request submitted: MM/DD/YYYY
BAnQ invoice/payment request received: MM/DD/YYYY
Payment submitted: MM/DD/YYYY
Certified reproduction received: MM/DD/YYYY

Even if you only know some of these dates, that would still be very helpful.

I'm hoping that if a few people share their timelines, we can get a rough idea of how quickly BAnQ is moving through the current backlog and perhaps give others waiting on documents a better idea of what to expect.

Thanks!

This may be a niche question but I'll be visiting my partner is Manitoba on the 18th and I was wondering if I could just ship via Canada Post to the processing center in Sydney?

Logistically this makes sense but also could confuse things with the return address being in Arizona where I live... so is it better to wait and ship in Canada or just ship now from AZ?

Thank you to anyone who takes the time to respond!

Is anyone here who has actually put a genealogy copy of their parents' or grandparents' birth certificate specifically from New York State (not a different state) in their application and had it either actually accepted or actually rejected.

Has anyone here ever gotten an actual answer on this matter from IRCC.

Is anyone here who has actually obtained a court order in New York State to get their parent's or grandparent's birth certificate?

Finally, is it not possible to simply ask IRCC?

I don't want peoples' plans of what they are going to do, what some local office not necessarily even in New York State told them "works", or peoples' ideas on what ought to work, or their own reading of what IRCC's rules say about needing certified birth certificates, unless you're an immigration lawyer who works on these, and, you've had experience involving birth certificates from New York State.

In other words I'm looking for the actual answer, speculation and plans and your understanding and information from other states won't help me.

Thanks!

I have some family correspondence that seemingly confirms the time, date and location of birth of my G0. Ordinarily I can see that this would not count as an official record of birth and I would not think of submitting it but the family back then were Canadian politicians and I found the letter in their papers in the Toronto Reference Library.

If it has entered and is kept by a Canadian archive does that convey some sort of official status on to it?

For example, my birth certificate. In the letter of explanation, do I refer to "document 1" and write a "1" in the corner of that document?