Canada introduces new law to expand second generation citizen rights
By Bruce Allen In Canada Immigration NewsOn June 5, 2025, the Canadian government introduced legislation in Parliament to allow more persons to become Canadian citizens by descent. The law is called Bill C-3. In 2009 and 2015, Parliament passed legislation that extended Canadian citizenship to anyone who had a parent that was born in Canada, or naturalized in Canada before the person’s birth. This was done to fix the status of thousands of “lost Canadians” who lost their Canadian citizenship, or never acquired Canadian citizenship in the first place, because of the many technicalities of previous Canadian law. However, the 2009 and 2015 amendments cut off the right to citizenship after the first generation, with certain limited exceptions.
On December 19, 2023, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that the second generation cutoff violated the Canadian Charter of Rights. The Ontario court gave the government 6 months to enact new legislation. A previous bill, Bill C-71, was introduced in the last Parliament, but did not get passed before Parliament was dissolved for new elections. The court’s deadline has now been extended to November 20, 2025.
The new legislation, if passed in its current form, would result in everyone becoming a Canadian citizen if their parent was a Canadian citizen at the time of their birth, even if the parent was born outside Canada. There is no apparent limit on the number of generations. However, there would be a new rule that would apply to children born after the new law comes in effect. These children would become citizens only if their Canadian citizen parent had lived in Canada for a total of 1,095 days before their birth.This is referred to as a “substantial connection to Canada.”
The government has also announced an interim program that would allow second generation persons to apply now for a discretionary grant of citizenship under subsection 5(4) of the Citizenship Act. This program was implemented April 1, 2025, and is now in effect.
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