Canadian citizenship by descent
Citizenship by descent is Canadian citizenship you inherit through your family, wherever in the world you were born. It can reach you through a parent, a grandparent, or an ancestor further back than that.
The rule that shut people out, and how it ended.
Nobody lost citizenship they already held. Somebody born abroad to a Canadian parent kept theirs. What 2009 changed is that they could no longer pass it down, so their own children, born abroad, were not Canadian, and neither was anyone after them.
17 APRIL 2009
The first-generation limit takes effect.
19 DECEMBER 2023
Bjorkquist et al. v. Attorney General of Canada, 2023 ONSC 7152. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice finds the limit unconstitutional.
15 DECEMBER 2025
Bill C-3, S.C. 2025, c. 5, comes into force after Royal Assent on 20 November 2025. For anyone born abroad before this date the limit is gone, and a person whose only obstacle was that limit is a citizen from this day, by operation of law. For births and adoptions from this date it is not removed but replaced, by a test on the parent's own days in Canada.
Nobody in that position applies for citizenship. They apply for proof of it. The day count belongs to a different group entirely.
The thread was cut in 2009. Bill C-3 ties it back on.
For sixteen years, a citizen born abroad could not pass citizenship to their own child born abroad, however long the family had been Canadian.
Since 15 December 2025 the line runs its full length again. The repair reaches backwards, through generations already born and long since grown.
- Your grandmotherBorn in Canada · root of the lineCitizen
- Your motherBorn abroad · first generation, never cut offCitizen
- YouBorn abroad · second generationCitizen
- Your childBorn abroad · third generationCitizen
- Every generation afterBorn abroad · and onwardCitizen
Anyone already born, and blocked only by the limit, became a citizen on that date by operation of law. A child born or adopted abroad afterwards, beyond the first generation, needs a Canadian parent with 1,095 days of physical presence in Canada.
Who this covers
Descent cases arrive in a handful of recognizable shapes. Finding yours is the first thing a review does, because it decides which rule is even being applied to you.
Children born outside Canada
A Canadian parent who was born or naturalized in Canada passes citizenship to a child born abroad. That has always been true, and no day count has ever applied to it.
Second and later generations
Your Canadian parent was born abroad as well. This is the group the old limit shut out, and the group Bill C-3 reopened.
Lost Canadians
You lost citizenship, or never received it, under rules that have since been repealed. The repairs made in 2009 and in 2015 stopped short of a great many people.
Citizenship that lapsed at 28
Under former section 8, a person born abroad after 14 February 1977 to a parent also born abroad ceased to be a citizen on their 28th birthday unless they applied to keep it. Bill C-3 restores them.
Children adopted outside Canada
You were adopted outside Canada by a Canadian citizen. The route is a grant of citizenship for adopted persons rather than the proof application, and where the adoption was completed on or after 15 December 2025 the Canadian parent's days in Canada come into it. Adoption cases turn on which wording reaches your own facts, so they are read one at a time.
Children born in Canada, in one narrow case
Being born here settles it for almost everybody. The exception is small and surprising: where a parent was a foreign diplomat, or worked in Canada for a foreign government or an international organisation, and the other parent was neither a citizen nor a permanent resident, the child was not Canadian at birth.
Complicated family histories
Several generations, names that changed between documents, records held in more than one country, and nobody left who can confirm any of it from memory.
Start with what you know.
The first conversation costs nothing. You do not need documents, or even firm dates. Tell us what you have and we will work out which rule reaches your family.