Citizenship through parents
If one of your parents is Canadian and you were born outside Canada, two facts decide whether you are a citizen: where that parent was born, and when you were born.
Three things decide whether a parent counts.
The date they became Canadian, not the fact of it
A parent has to hold the status on the day the child is born. Where citizenship was granted afterwards, it does not reach back, and a family can be one year the wrong side of a date they never thought about.
Unless the amendments made them Canadian
A parent restored by the changes in 2009, 2015 or 2025 holds that status from their own birth rather than from the day it was recognized. A child born long before anybody realized the parent was Canadian can still be reached by it, which is the opposite of how the rule above reads.
Whether the law counted them as a parent at all
Before July 2020 only a biological parent could pass citizenship down. Since then a non-biological parent can, provided they are the legal parent at birth, which means the person named on the original birth record. It matters for surrogacy, for donor conception, and for same-sex parents whose names were on the record from the start.
Your parent was born in Canada
You are a citizen.
You are the first generation born outside Canada. Citizenship reached you at birth, and the rule that blocked other families never applied to you.
No day count, ever
Your parent was born abroad, and you were born before 15 December 2025
A citizen since that date.
You are beyond the first generation, which is exactly who the old limit shut out. If that limit was the only thing in the way, citizenship came to you automatically.
No day count. You apply for proof
Your parent was born abroad, and you were born on or after 15 December 2025
It depends on your parent's days.
Your Canadian parent needs 1,095 days of physical presence in Canada, cumulative and in any order, all of it before your birth or adoption.
1,095 days required
Naturalized in Canada counts the same as born in Canada. How the 1,095 days are counted.
Building a claim from records alone
You do not need a relative who can confirm the details. Bill C-3 provides for exactly this, and your entitlement is unchanged. What changes is where the proof comes from: registries, archives and family papers instead of somebody you can ask. IRCC’s list of acceptable documents reaches back to pre-1947 British subject and landed-immigrant records, and it does so for this reason.
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.