The first half of 2026 has seen thousands of so-called “Lost Canadians” claim Canadian citizenship under Canada’s new citizenship laws.
Those laws, known as Bill C-3, enable certain individuals born abroad to assert Canadian citizenship if they can show an ancestral connection to a Canadian citizen.
Sources say these new rules have opened the door to recognizing Canadians whose connection to Canada may be very distant — and is creating practical challenges as well.
“[W]hat the government did in Bill C-3 is basically open the floodgates so that if you had a Canadian great-great-grandfather, but nobody since then had any meaningful connection to Canada, you would still get citizenship,” said Andrew Griffith.
Griffith is a former director general of citizenship and multiculturalism at Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the department today known as Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
“So that was the mistake that was made,” he said.
Did Ottawa go too far?
In 2023, a lower Ontario court ruled that Canada’s “first-generation limit” on citizenship by descent was unconstitutional. Under those rules, Canadian citizens who were born abroad could not automatically pass their citizenship to children who were also born outside Canada.
Rather than appeal the decision, the Trudeau government chose to amend its citizenship law.
Bill C-3 removed the first-generation limit for those born abroad before Dec. 15, 2025. It allows them to have their citizenship retroactively affirmed if they can prove they have Canadian lineage, such as a parent, grandparent or great-grandparent who was born in Canada.
Griffith notes that the far-reaching application of this law “was never really anticipated or discussed very much during the parliamentary hearings.”
He also says Parliament could have crafted a narrower response.
The successful court challenge turned on individuals who “were all second-generation Canadians born overseas, but they all had a significant connection to Canada,” he said.
It would have made sense for the government to respond to the ruling by permitting second-generation Canadians to assert citizenship, he says.
But extending citizenship to descendants several generations removed from Canada went much further.
“To my mind, somebody whose great-grandfather lived in Canada, they’re not a ‘lost Canadian’ because their families have chosen to live elsewhere. … So that’s where I think the government overreached.”
Immigration lawyer Clara Morrissey agrees that the court’s decision did not require Parliament to create such broad rules.
“The court didn’t tell the government that it needed to structure the law in a very specific way,” she said.
‘Reaffirms Canadian values’
The federal government has defended the legislation, saying it recognizes Canadian families are increasingly mobile and often maintain strong ties to Canada even while living abroad for extended periods.
“Many Canadians choose to study abroad, travel to experience another culture, or relocate for family or personal reasons and still have a meaningful connection to our country,” Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab said when the legislation came into force.
“This new legislation strengthens the bond between Canadians at home and around the world, and reaffirms the values we hold as a nation.”
Notably, the new law does require future generations born abroad to demonstrate a substantial connection to Canada.
Specifically, children born or adopted abroad on or after Dec. 15, 2025 to a Canadian parent who was also born abroad must show that the parent spent three full years in Canada before their child’s birth or adoption.
For these rules, Griffith says he would have liked to see the government insist on applicants showing they spent three years in Canada over a defined time period.
Allowing applicants to show they meet this requirement over many years or even decades increases the administrative complexity for both the government and applicants, he said.
Archivists feel the pressure
The new rules are also increasing administrative complexity for agencies that play a role in helping individuals prove their eligibility.
Archivists say they are being inundated with requests for historical records needed to prove Canadian ancestry, predominantly from Americans.
Quebec’s provincial archive, the National Library and Archives of Quebec, says it has seen a significant influx in requests from U.S. citizens seeking certified copies of historical records.
Bill C-3 has led to “an exceptional surge in requests handled across [the archive’s] network,” a spokesperson told Canadian Affairs in an emailed statement.
In May 2026 alone, the archive received 1,969 requests, compared with 87 requests in May 2025.
In response, the organization has created a dedicated certification team and 11 contractual positions to process documents.
Similarly, Jo McCutcheon, executive director of the Canadian Council of Archives, recently told Canadian Affairs that the new law has put tremendous pressure on archivists.
In the first two months of 2026, the council’s 13 member organizations had received over 1,000 requests for records — up from 1,924 in all of 2025.
For its part, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says it has “not observed a significant increase” in proof-of-citizenship applications.
The department approved nearly 17,000 citizenship-by-descent proof applications in the first quarter of 2026, up 40 per cent from the first quarter of 2025.
As of March 31, just over 4,000 had received citizenship through Bill C-3, the spokesperson told Canadian Affairs in an emailed statement.
“At this time, the majority of approved citizenship by descent proof applications continue to be from individuals who were eligible without Bill C-3,” the spokesperson added.
Canadian Affairs asked IRCC whether it has an estimate of how many people worldwide may now be eligible for Canadian citizenship as a result of Bill C-3. The IRCC did not respond to that inquiry.
Before the bill passed, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that the bill’s predecessor legislation — which contained substantially similar citizenship-by-descent provisions — could affect roughly 115,000 people over five years. That estimate was based on assumptions about expected application rates and carried uncertainty, the office noted.
Griffith notes that Canadian citizenship policy has historically tried to balance accessibility with a meaningful sense of national belonging. In his view, the new law risks upsetting that balance.
“Citizenship is one of the things that actually can bring people together,” he said. “ And it’s important to get that balance [right] in terms of having a sense of what it is to be Canadian while not making it so restrictive that it becomes impossible … for people to apply.”
