In December, Parliament passed Bill C-3, a law that enables people born outside of Canada to claim Canadian citizenship by proving they had a Canadian ancestor.
Called the Act to Amend the Citizenship Act, the bill was a response to an Ontario court ruling that held a “first-generation limit” on citizenship was unconstitutional.
The new rules retroactively restore Canadian citizenship to someone who can prove that an ancestor, such as grandparent or great-grandparent, was Canadian.
“While these recent changes extended access to Canadian citizenship by descent, having distant Canadian ancestry alone does not make someone automatically eligible,” a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) told Canadian Affairs in an emailed statement.
“People born outside Canada before December 15, 2025, must show they have a Canadian parent — or a parental ancestor, such as a grandparent or great-grandparent — who became a Canadian citizen on or after January 1, 1947 (or April 1, 1949, in Newfoundland and Labrador),” the spokesperson said.
The new rules have quickly created a challenge for archivists at Canadian religious organizations. Many say they have started receiving a deluge of requests, primarily from Americans, looking for baptismal certificates from relatives many generations removed.
“We’re drowning in requests,” said Debra Majer, archivist for the Roman Catholic Diocese of London in Ontario.
In a normal year, her archive gets around 100 requests for baptismal certificates and other genealogical records — none of them from Americans.
In the first quarter of 2026, they had received over 200 requests from people in the U.S. “We are swamped,” Majer said.
The IRCC says each “proof of citizenship application” is reviewed on a case-by-case basis to determine a person’s eligibility.
“Applicants must provide documents proving both (1) that their parental ancestor was Canadian and (2) that they are directly related through each generation,” the spokesperson said.
“This can include birth certificates, citizenship or naturalization certificates, or other official records showing family relationships and citizenship status. Information from online genealogy websites cannot be used on its own to prove a claim to citizenship.”
‘No warning’
Majer says that, when Parliament changed the rules, it was not thinking about the downriver implications for archivists.
“We’ve had to hire another person to handle the influx.”
Fueling the increase in requests are groups on social media that offer advice and contact information for Americans seeking proof of Canadian ancestry. “We’re getting as many as five requests a day, including on weekends,” Majer said.
When asking for documents, some Americans explain why they are seeking proof of a connection to Canada.
“They talk about Trump, the current political situation, and the upcoming draft,” she said, citing how they want to avoid having their sons automatically registered by the Selective Service, a U.S. agency that maintains a database of individuals potentially subject to a military draft.
The archive charges $50 per request. Some Americans have added a donation to the archives as a way to say thank you.
In addition to her work in London, Majer is Chair of the Canadian Catholic Archives Group. “We are talking to each other about this,” she said, adding the increased workload is affecting Catholic archives across the country.
Claire Wilton, an archivist for the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, received 74 total requests for records in 2025. By the end of March of this year, she had received 88, primarily from Americans wanting to apply for Canadian citizenship due to Bill C-3.
With only two staff. “it’s quite a struggle to keep up,” Wilton said. As at other archives, “there was no warning,” she said. “It’s been crazy.”
‘Huge uptick’
Tyyne Petrowski, who directs the archives for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Winnipeg, has also seen a “huge uptick” in the number of requests from Americans.
With only her on staff part-time, it has been a significant increase in the workload. What does not help is that many people lack good information about their ancestors.
“They don’t know what parish they were part of or when they were born,” Petrowski said, adding the archive charges $25 for each copy of a record. “It’s a lot more work for me.”
Jo McCutcheon, executive director of the Canadian Council of Archives, says Parliament had “zero consideration for the impact on archivists” when they passed the act.
The IRCC spokesperson did not respond to Canadian Affairs’ request for comment about whether Parliament had considered the impact on archivists when it changed its rules.
Archives already do not receive a lot of funding, McCutcheon notes. Archives in Canada typically receive their funding from a mix of government, private and academic sources as well as internal revenues.
“This is putting extra pressure on staff who are already working under constrained circumstances,” she said.
In 2025, the 13 members of the Canadian Council of Archives reported that archives in their provinces and territories handled 1,924 requests for records. In the first two months of 2026, they had received over 1,000.
The United Church archives alone had 274 requests for records by the end of February. Last year, they had a total of 660.
“Nobody in Parliament was thinking about the downriver implications for us,” she said. “And the situation is only getting more critical.”
