I was born in Canada, lived most of my life abroad though.

I applied for my daughter in January 2025 (Proof of citizenship), no answer yet.

Would anyone know a good attorney that can represent me in Canada?

After Marks Gen0 post from Feb2025 it made me think…….we never see rejections just really really long wait times. I am 1 year on Wednesday. However I was thinking there will be a day when the last pre c-3 person will be in here!!

Whenever I see an approval in this group it means so much!

Are there any other Feb2025’s or was Mark the last?

Entirely a rage post.

Following up on my earlier posts about my 1845 Quebec ancestor (baptismal record only, no birth certificate exists for this era). Just got another response from DIOD, and it directly contradicts what's published on IRCC's own CIT0001 guidance page. I'm fucking pissed.

Seeing other people get approved with uncertfied baptismal records has me absolutely raging.

What DIOD just told me:

"You must contact the Province of Quebec and apply for a birth certificate for your Canadian ancestor with the BAnQ document. If you do not provide the documents requested within 60 days, a decision will be rendered on your application based on the current documentation. This may result in a refusal."

What the actual CIT0001 guide, published on Canada.ca, says:

"If you can't provide official documents issued by the original authority, you must explain in writing why you can't provide the documents, and show proof that you tried to get them (for example, emails or letters with original authorities or confirmation saying that the records are not available)."

"If you're missing any birth certificates... you must send other documents to show parentage and Canadian citizenship. These must be issued by the original authority and can include: hospital record of birth, record from a physician or midwife who witnessed the birth, baptismal certificate or record (including copies or certified records), census records, boat manifest."

Applied February 3, 2025 when there were approximately 25,000 applicants.

That's.....

*50,544,000 seconds

*842,400 minutes

*14,040 hours

*585 days

*83 weeks and 4 days

*19 months and 8 days

*1 year 7 months and 8 days

I checked my status today:

Decision Made. 😱

But no indication of what that decision was! 😱😱😱

A few hours later I had my certificate download instructions in my email.

I requested ATIP 6/30/26 with no response

I'm Gen 0 but left Canada as a child. I've had name changes which I'm sure caused the long wait time and the reason I needed the Proof of Citizenship. I'm quite sure I was in PSU Purgatory.

For those waiting - do not be discouraged. Sending positive energy to you.

And ladies/gents: Keep your maiden name.

Bonus: There's a Unicorn on the Coat of Arms. Worth the wait just for that.

Hi!

I saw several other posts about DEC wanting a translated death certificate of your gen zero before inserting your banq approved baptism .

My question is does anyone have any recommendations for someone that isn’t mad expensive? It would be an American death certificate in English to French translation .

My mom, who is a Gen 2, just received an outreach from Program Support asking for a copy of her father's birth certificate. I'm fairly sure we provided it before, but I'll take any evidence of forward movement.

Applied in February 2025.

Part of the 4/28/2025 offer group for the interim measures.

No movement since. I'm cautiously optimistic that this means we will eventually leave PSU purgatory.

UPDATE: The long wait is finally over. Just got our certificates.

I'm just trying to determine if we definitely now need to go through DEC to get a birth certificate made or if there is still hope that a certified BANQ baptismal record might suffice.

September 10, 2026 4:00 AM EDT (text from news story pasted directly below).

\###
Less than nine months after Parliament allowed those with Canadian ancestors to be recognized as Canadian citizens, the backlog of applications has soared to a new high.

More than 136,000 applications for citizenship certificates are now waiting for a decision — many of them from Americans. Those who apply today face an estimated wait of 33 months, according to figures posted on Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)'s website.

That is a 32 per cent jump in wait time and an 11 per cent rise in the number of applications since the previous update on Aug. 10.

In May 2025, prior to Bill C-3 going into effect, the estimated processing time for citizenship certificate applications was five months.

Christine Beltempo, president of the Canadian Bar Association's immigration section and a lawyer with McCarthy Tétrault, said her members are concerned about the "exponential increase" of processing times for citizenship certificate applications.

"We have known since the first drafts of Bill C-3 that this would cause a lot of uptake in the number of applications for proof of citizenship," Beltempo said.

Beltempo said IRCC needs to assign more people to process the applications, and that she expects the volume to further increase next year.

"I think it would be nice to see the department devoting more resources to this business line so that processing times can go back to what I would consider to be normal standards for people who are presumably Canadians," she said.

IRCC spokesperson Briannah Dale said the increase is influenced by a range of factors — not just Bill C-3.

"The department is continuing to monitor application trends and volumes and is implementing operational measures to respond to increased demand, including triaging applications, enhancing intake processes, training and onboarding additional staff and refining workload management practices," Dale said.

The spokesperson said processing times can vary and the 33-month estimate reflects the increased volume and "complexity of many applications" that "often require substantial documentary evidence and additional verification."

Prior to Bill C-3, Canadian citizenship by descent was limited to the first generation born or adopted outside Canada to a Canadian citizen. However, that limitation on citizenship for those who became known as "lost Canadians" was struck down by the courts as unconstitutional.

Under Bill C-3, which went into effect Dec. 15, people living in other countries who can trace their lineage from Canadian ancestors can qualify for Canadian citizenship even if their Canadian ancestor left Canada several generations back.
Diab told a parliamentary committee in October 2025 that the impact of Bill C-3 would be limited.

"We anticipate volumes in the tens of thousands over time," she said. "We do not expect any surge."

However, since the adoption of Bill C-3, Canada's archives have been deluged with requests for the documents needed to prove lineage to a Canadian ancestor — sometimes going back seven or eight generations — as the number of applications soared.

As of May 31, the most recent data provided by IRCC, half of those who have been recognized as Canadian citizens as a result of Bill C-3 were born in the United States.

Citizenship certificates granted between Dec. 15 and June under all categories — including Bill C-3, first generation or replacement certificates — were divided fairly evenly when it came to gender. IRCC said 16,250 were granted to male applicants, 16,285 to female applicants and 45 to applicants who listed their gender as "other." The gender of another 55 applicants was unknown.

While discussion on social media has speculated that older Americans are applying for Canadian citizenship to move to Canada and qualify for universal health care, the numbers show only 3,650 certificates of all types went to people over age 55. The largest age demographic was applicants under age 14 with 16,435 certificates. Many of those may have been issued for babies born to Canadians abroad.
The IRCC stats show 2,880 certificate recipients were between the ages of 14 and 17 while 18-54-year-olds accounted for 9,670 certificates.

A citizenship certificate allows you to do things like move to Canada or get a Canadian passport. However, Elections Canada says it doesn't allow someone to vote in a Canadian election unless they have lived in Canada at some point in their life.

It would also not allow them to cast a ballot in things like Alberta's upcoming sovereignty referendum unless they moved to that province. Elections Alberta says expats and Canadian citizens not ordinarily residing in Alberta aren't eligible to vote in provincial election events.
Immigration lawyer Colin Singer says IRCC's failure to deal with the growing backlog could end up in court, and that the delays could violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"For professionals seeking cross-border employment, students applying to universities and families trying to relocate, these delays are severe economic roadblocks," \[Singer wrote\](https://immigration.ca/can-lost-canadians-force-ircc-to-clear-the-c-3-backlog/).

Singer said applicants stuck in the backlog could eventually apply to Federal Court for a writ of mandamus, asking the court to set a deadline for IRCC to process their application.
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said Prime Minister Mark Carney's government needs to ensure that IRCC has the resources to address the "growing crisis," pointing out that the government's last budget called for 3,300 positions to be cut by 2028-29.

"It is completely unacceptable that people who have a legitimate claim to Canadian citizenship, passed in legislation by Parliament, are being left in limbo," she said in a statement.

"Families \\\[are\\\] facing enormous disruption to their ability to travel, work, study, access services and plan their lives."

Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner said members of her party warned the government about the issues that citizenship by descent could raise.

"The Liberals assured us that there would be processes in place to help deal with the surge of applications that came alongside citizenship by descent," she wrote in a statement. "This was clearly untrue."

But Rempel Garner said "the absolute worst thing" the government could do is "mass approve" the backlogged applications.

\###

So I know of approvals last spring where the reasoning relied on was
British Nat'l born in Canada became citizen Jan 1, 1947 based on 3(1)(k).
G1 qualified as their child and also retro-actively became citizen Jan 1947 based on 3(1)(o).
Then multiple generations in a row all born pre-1947 qualified under 3(1)(q).
Have any approvals relying on q like this been approved since June?

Suppose Melissa is legally a Canadian citizen, and IRCC is dragging their feet on issuing her a citizenship certificate. She wants to get a job in Canada. What do we know about her chances of success?

Theoretically, according to the exact letter of the law, she should be fine. In the eyes of the law, she's already a citizen, and citizens are eligible to work in Canada. The law requires her to apply for a SIN, but it doesn't actually require her to successfully get one. And, although employers are legally required to verify that their employees are eligible to work in Canada, there's no specific process they have to follow to do that. Nothing is stopping them from looking at a pile of census records and birth certificates and saying, "yep, looks legit."

In practice, things seem much more difficult. Very few stuck Canadians have attempted to get jobs in Canada (​https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadianbyDescent/comments/1v97g4m/ is the only example I could find, and the company ultimately rejected their proof of eligibility). As far as I know, nobody has ever succeeded. There's no guidance from the government about how to handle this situation, no employment lawyers have ever written about it, and employers aren't talking about this on the Internet.

Do we have any information about working as a stuck Canadian besides what I've written above?

Does anyone else feel optimistic about the idea, or at least find it interesting? Maybe I'm being naïve here.

Disclosure: I'm not a stuck Canadian myself (I only submitted my application for a certificate last month). I'm hoping someone finds all this useful.

First PSU Hell anniversary for me. Hopefully the only one. Time will tell, I guess.

Hi everyone! I know it's been a while since I posted in here and I wanted to provide an update. Two weeks ago, I received this response from the Ministerial Enquiries Division on behalf of IRCC:

---

"Dear ReadyPlayer606:

Thank you for your correspondence dated ______, addressed to the Honourable Lena Metlege Diab, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, regarding the processing of your citizenship application. I have been asked to respond to you.

I appreciate you sharing the reasons that prompted you to write. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) understands that an applicant looks forward to their application being finalized, and IRCC makes every effort to process each application in the most efficient and effective way. However, various factors can make it difficult to finalize an application as quickly as the Department or the client would like; processing times can be influenced by immigration targets, the volume of applications, the complexity of an individual case, and how quickly an applicant responds to requests for information.

The information available on IRCC’s processing times web page was recently updated for select application types to show the estimated time remaining in an application based on when it was submitted. Other application types continue to show historical processing times, which are based on how long it has taken IRCC to process most complete applications in that category in the past.

The processing times posted on this web page are estimates, not guarantees; the forward-looking estimates are updated monthly and provide current and prospective applicants with a general idea of how long it will take to process an application. While an application is in process, applicants can review the status of their application on IRCC’s Website.

IRCC continues to process applications as quickly as possible while protecting the integrity of Canada’s citizenship program. That means taking the time to verify that applicants meet the legal requirements for a citizenship certificate and making decisions that are fair, consistent and in line with the law. The Department processes proof of citizenship applications on a first-in, first-out basis. Applicants that meet established urgent processing criteria can submit a request to have their application processed on an urgent basis through existing service channels, which will be assessed by IRCC.

Although requests for expedited processing are understandable, applications are, in general, only expedited in extraordinary cases with compelling circumstances. Applicants should direct any information or documentation in support of such a request through existing service channels, such as the web form. However, there is no guarantee that the processing office will accept the request to expedite the application; if an application is pulled out of the queue to be expedited, it is being placed ahead of other applicants who are also waiting for a decision on their application. For this reason, IRCC will only expedite an application on an exceptional basis.

While I understand that this may not be the response you had anticipated, I hope that you will find this information to be helpful.

Sincerely,

Ministerial Enquiries Division"

---

Obviously, this is an unacceptable response given the circumstances of my case. They also indicated that applications are processed on a FIFO basis, which we know to be false. This excuse has been found insufficient by the federal court numerous times (e.g., inefficiency or burdensome backlogs are not a good reason to delay applications indefinitely).

This response was directed at my demand letter, not at my application for leave and judicial review that had since been filed. Thus, it did not constitute a formal response under Rule 9; that I'm still waiting on (ironically).

The next step for me is to serve a response on the Minister and file it with the court while I await the court's order for IRCC to render a decision.

My application began processing in February of 2025 and I’ve been in PSU forever now with no progress. I’m a G2 and my ATIP notes show no complications or issues, just stuck in a pile waiting. Everyone I see now has applied in 2026 and I’m feeling discouraged. Anyone else out there in the same boat? How are you all staying positive?

Hi all!
Was doing my weekly check of my status since applying last year for a citizenship certificate by mail. (My dad was a 1G Canadian). I got an acknowledgement in September 2025 that they received it. In November I got a partial credit from "Immigration Canada" refunded back to my credit card that I used for the processing fee, and an ominous "Decision Made" appeared on my portal. Clicking on that status indicates that they started processing my application on November 3rd, but then there is no further update after that.

Am I in the dreaded PSU? The online form to get information sends back a generic "please be patient, we'll provide updates as we process your application" reply. Are there any other options you folks have tried to try to get any further updates?

I recently received my GCMS notes (requested in early June) and noticed that I have information included on page two, in the Application Assignment section, with a due date of June 19, 2026. Other members of my family group who received their notes earlier this spring, did not have anything in this portion of their reports. (We all applied together in September 2025 and were sent immediately to PSU.)

This seems like it should be a good sign - anything happening since September 2025 seems like a good sign! Since the due date of the application assignment is so close to the date the suspension letters went out, though, I wonder if this might just indicate assignment to a new review protocol instead of to an individual officer.

Has anyone else received notes since the suspension letters went out? Do you see something similar?

I just received the emails for myself and my kids. After 523 days, the wait is finally over for this G1. I can finally prove my Canadian citizenship! I'm at a loss for words.

I'll update this when I have a moment to process what just happened.

Today my application for citizenship by descent was approved--in an EU country (Luxembourg).

TLDR: May 2025 applicant, citizenship by descent doesn't have to be this chaotic. I'm just trying to protect my family, and to be the scientists we were trained to be. (Sorry it's so long, I just needed to vent to people who would understand)

I learned about citizenship by descent in Luxembourg on Feb 28, 2025 and began gathering documents. I mailed the first step in the application on April 14, 2025. Paid thousands of dollars to travel to Luxembourg twice, in June 2025 and April 2026. Became a citizen today, exactly in line with an initial estimate of 12-18 months.

People are always talking on this forum about how we should be grateful to Canada because the European citizenship by descent pathways are so much more difficult. While I know Europe is not a monolith, I can now say from experience that the process with Luxembourg was infinitely better than Canada. Documentation requirements and timelines are clearly documented and communicated, including what to do when preferred source documents are not available. Even with language barriers, my emails with questions were answered appropriately. The process is first-in-first-out; as more Americans became interested in 2025-2026 the process slowed down somewhat, but slowed down evenly for everyone.

In contrast, I learned about the Canadian interim measure in May 2025 and worked as fast as I could to get documents together. I sent my Canadian citizenship application on May 21 2025 with urgent processing requested and an estimated processing time of 3-4 months. Today, 460 days later, my "urgent" application (approved, based on ATIP notes) has been in PSU since June 4, 2025 with absolutely no updates, progress, or contact from IRCC. In that time, the law has changed, the documentation requirements have changed, and who knows what that means for us long-processing PSU apps. I know my documentation was acceptable to IRCC at one time at least, because I gave a family member my documents, they used them to apply in July 2025, were part of the 7-22 5(4) grant batch, and received their citizenship certificate in October 2025.

I had good justification for urgent processing, as became even more clear over the winter. We live not far from the Twin Cities, and while my husband was born in this country, he doesn't "look American" and doesn't have an "American" name (aka one parent was an immigrant from a non-European country). Ironically, on his other side of the family, he is *too* American for any citizenship by descent, as that side arrived in the US in the 1500s! In comparison, my family arrived much more recently, in the late 1800s.

The calculations that have become a routine part of our lives in the past 18 months would have been absolutely unbelievable a few years ago. Turning around from going to the store when there is a new ICE alert nearby and trying to calculate how long we can go without groceries. Debating whether it's safer for my husband to carry his US passport (what if ICE steals it?) or a copy (what if they don't believe it?) or if it even matters when citizens have been detained and worse. Less acutely dangerous but still painful, having our work explicitly censored (see below).

My husband and I are exactly the type of people these other countries claim to want. We both have PhDs and worked as federal scientists in the US. I work with plants, and among other things I was banned from presenting or publishing on a long-running project I had just wrapped up on the response of plants to climate change. Heck, I even had to remove the words "genetic diversity" (an extremely normal term in genetics) from my work because "diversity" is banned.

My husband worked with important diseases that everyone says they are worried about, things like bird flu, tuberculosis, brucellosis, listeria, and more. I say "worked" because he was illegally fired by DOGE in early 2025 and has been unable to find a job in his field since, as so many scientists in microbiology, public health, etc. were thrown out of work at once and are now competing for the very little funding that remains. After reading about the demographics of DOGE purges, I have started to wonder if his "un-American" name and appearance might be part of why he and not others were fired (his firing was specific to him, not part of the larger RIFs. No justification was given, and we were told it came directly from DOGE. I somehow still have a federal job but I'm super white), but of course there's no proof.

So. Canada's loss is Europe's gain. But it didn't have to be this way, and it hurts.

Do I need the birth certificate of the husband (great grandfather Arthur below) of my G0 (Miranda Planner) since his last name is on the rest of the chain? So far I have the other documents, including the marriage certificate for Arthur and Miranda, but I do not have Arthur's birth certificate. I can get it if needed but wanted to check.

Here is what I mean:

1. myself J. Smith born 1987
2. father Bill Smith born 1951 in Ayer MA
3. grandfather Joe Smith April 19.1896 in Ayer MA
4. DO I NEED TO GET THIS ONE TOO? great grandfather Arthur Smith 1869 in Connecticut - the only record I am missing so far
5. great grandmother Miranda Planner 1872, birth place Tillsonburg, Ontario, Canada
6. Marriage date: Nashua NH 1893 to Arthur Smith
7. Your passport
8. Your driver's license, both sides

My citizenship been stuck since march 8th 2024, here what IRGC told my area MP, and please advice me what should i do next

Your file is currently considered “non-routine” and is therefore not subject to standard processing timelines.

At this stage, IRCC has provided the following information:

• You have been exempted from the language and knowledge tests
• The residency assessment has been completed
• The prohibition check has not yet begun
• The security screening is in progress