Canadians born outside the country are facing waits of up to 33 months for a citizenship certificate — the official proof-of-citizenship document needed for a Canadian passport — as Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s (IRCC) backlog for the application swelled to about 136,000 people waiting for a decision, according to IRCC’s own processing-times tool, last updated September 3, 2026. CBC News reported that the backlog is now preventing some Canadians born abroad from coming home, with professionals seeking cross-border employment, students applying to universities, and families trying to relocate among those caught in the delay.
CBC News detailed the case of Pascal Sud, a Canadian citizen living in Jamaica, who has been separated from his newborn daughter, Sofianne, for months while waiting for her citizenship certificate to be processed. Under IRCC’s current posted timeline, Sofianne could be nearly three years old before she is recognized by the Canadian government and able to cross the border as a citizen. CBC reported that some families in this situation have tried applying for visitor visas on their children’s foreign passports instead, only to have IRCC reject the applications — on the grounds that the children are already Canadian citizens in law, and so must travel on a Canadian passport they cannot obtain without the delayed certificate.
The surge traces back to Bill C-3, a change to the Citizenship Act that came into force in December 2025 and abolished the “first-generation limit,” a 2009 rule that had barred Canadian citizens born abroad from passing citizenship to their own children if those children were also born outside Canada. The limit had been struck down as unconstitutional by Canadian courts in 2023. Bill C-3 restored citizenship by descent for people who had been cut off under the old rule, while adding a new “substantial connection to Canada” test that a Canadian parent must meet before passing citizenship to a second generation born abroad, for children born on or after December 15, 2025. More than half of the people newly recognized as citizens under the law — 3,510 people — were born in the United States, CBC reported. Citizenship-by-descent applications require IRCC officers to verify historical documents such as birth, marriage and baptismal records across multiple generations and jurisdictions to establish an unbroken lineage, a labour-intensive process that is slower than standard naturalization casework.
IRCC’s posted processing time for a citizenship certificate has risen sharply over the past year — from roughly 10 to 12 months earlier in 2026 to 33 months as of the September 3, 2026 update, according to Canadian immigration law publisher Immigration.ca, which tracks the department’s monthly processing-time disclosures. Immigration.ca said that if the current trajectory continues, wait times could exceed four years. IRCC’s own tool shows roughly 136,000 people now in the queue for a citizenship certificate, and does not provide a public breakdown of how many of those applicants are affected specifically by the Bill C-3 surge versus other proof-of-citizenship cases.
References
CBC News – Canadians born abroad caught up in yearslong citizenship certificate processing delays / Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada – Check current processing times (Citizenship certificate / proof of citizenship) / Immigration.ca – Proof of Canadian Citizenship Processing Time Hits 33 Months
