Obtaining Citizenship Based on Descent

Do you have Canadian ancestors?  Do you think you might be interested in Canadian citizenship? Perhaps your ancestry takes you to another country that permits citizenship based on your recent ancestors. If so, you may want to learn more about how to go about applying. (Many thanks to StLGS secretary and Ask Louie researcher, Debbie Benoit, for writing the first part of this week's post.)

Before 15 December 2025, in order to obtain Canadian citizenship if you were born outside Canada, you had to have a parent born in Canada. Canadian citizenship laws prevented Canadian citizens born abroad from automatically passing citizenship to a child born abroad.

In 2023, an Ontario court ruled that this first-generation limit was unconstitutional. Rather than appeal, the Canadian government amended the citizenship act through Bill C-3, effective 15 December 2025.

The new law provides that if you are descended from at least one Canadian ancestor, even before Canada became a country in 1947, you are eligible for citizenship by descent. The presumption is that you were a Canadian citizen because of the citizenship of your ancestor, and therefore the application is for a citizenship certificate. With a citizenship certificate, a person can apply for a Canadian passport. 

The application for a citizenship certificate is similar to filing for a lineage society. You must show the connections for each generation with documentation such as birth certificates, baptismal certificates, or marriage certificates. 

The Canadian government is requiring certified documents, if possible, color copies, and explanations if a person cannot obtain certified copies. Family trees or information from genealogical websites will not be sufficient. The application fee is $75.00. There is a months-long waiting period for applications to be processed. You can find an “Application For A Citizenship Certificate” (CIT 0001) at www.canada.ca.

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In case you can’t trace back to Canada, but you are interested in citizenship from an ancestral country, there are quite a few possibilities. For instance, you might qualify for Irish citizenship by descent if you had a parent or grandparent born in Ireland and registered with the Foreign Births Register. In some cases, having a great-grandparent born in Ireland will qualify, but only if your parent was registered in the Foreign Births Register. You can learn more on the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs website. 

Many other countries offer citizenship by descent, although most are similar to Ireland’s law, limited to recent generations. For a comprehensive list, this guide on Reddit is quite complete. (Ignore the warning about mature content; there is nothing harmful here.) If the guide isn’t visible when you go to the page, click on the black button at the top that says, “View NFSW content.”