Since the passing of Bill C-3 on December 15, 2025, the first-generation limit on Canadian citizenship by descent has been removed for those born before that date. This means that any individual with a Canadian ancestor may already be Canadian.

But before you celebrate, or start mailing off your paperwork, there’s a catch worth understanding.

Having a Canadian grandparent, or any ancestor further back, may make you Canadian, but you still need to prove your status to the Canadian government to avail all the rights of a citizen.

The harder part is applying for a Canadian citizenship certificate, the document that proves your status as a Canadian citizen and can be used to apply for a passport and access other benefits.

To get one, you can’t just submit your grandparent’s birth certificate and call it done. You have to show the paper trail linking them to you, generation by generation.

How the chain works

Take the case of a fictional applicant, Stacy McAdams, born in the US.

Stacy’s grandmother, Simone, was born in Quebec but left the country as a child. Simone married and had a son, Cameron, Stacy’s father, in the US.

Because of Bill C-3, Stacy is now a Canadian citizen herself. However, she still needs to submit a proof of citizenship application to prove it.

To submit a successful application, Stacy would need to gather:

• Simone’s birth certificate, showing she was born in Canada.
• Simone’s marriage certificate, closing the gap if she changed her name.
• Cameron’s long-form birth certificate, the version that names Simone as his mother.
• Stacy’s own long-form birth certificate, naming Cameron as her father to complete the loop.

One certificate proving your ancestor was Canadian isn’t enough. Canada’s citizenship department, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, (IRCC) wants an unbroken chain of documents connecting every generation in between.

Canada just emphasized that requirement

Showing this chain linking you to your Canadian ancestor is integral to proving your status. In June, IRCC updated its supporting documentation requirement for proof of citizenship applications, emphasizing this.

Amongst other things, it specified that, in cases where a person was born abroad to a Canadian parent