‘Reckless and irresponsible’: Some ‘lost Canadians’ told to return citizenship certificates pending review

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Macklin is adamant that applicants are not to blame for the reversal.

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“This should in no way impugn the people who applied under the rules that the government has set out,” she said. “I would not present this as somehow there’s something suspicious about people’s applications. The government had the opportunity to put in place processes that were mindful of what they were creating, which is an invitation to apply for citizenship based on very old historical records.”

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Macklin also called the new law “anomalous,” noting it flies in the face of other recent changes in Canadian legislation that have made it more difficult for newcomers to obtain citizenship, such as capping the number of new permanent residents, and reducing the number of student visas.

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She added that Bill C-3 sets out a more reasonable standard for citizenship going forward. “For people born after December 2025 you can pass on citizenship by descent, potentially one generation after another, but each generation will have to manifest and demonstrate a connection to Canada.”

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Retroactively, it’s a different story. “They don’t require any connection. All you have to show is the descent, and I’m not sure why the government thought it was advisable or necessary to do that,” she said. “Maybe they thought it would just be simpler, and we’ll just get rid of the problem if we attach no conditions retrospectively. (But) if you’re going to have that as a rule, then you’re going to have to contend with … a lot of evidentiary challenges, and you can’t blame those on the people who are applying.”

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The immigration news website CIC News (named when IRCC was called Citizenship and Immigration Canada) recommends anyone applying to get their documents directly from the source, noting: “A ‘source authority’ is the office that originally created and keeps the record; a state or provincial vital statistics office, a civil registry, or, in older Canadian cases, a recognized provincial archive.”

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It adds that a scan of a record from a genealogy site is not the same thing, even when the image is identical. “The genealogy site is a finding aid. The registry is the authority.” It also recommends getting records certified.

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Finally, it notes that, for any missing records, “IRCC’s own instruction guide tells applicants to include a letter of explanation for any missing or unclear documents. So the gap itself is not automatically a problem, a lack of accompanying explanation is.”

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