Bill C-3: what changed for citizenship by descent

For fifteen years, a single sentence in the Citizenship Act decided the fate of thousands of Canadian families: citizenship stops at the second generation born abroad. Bill C-3, passed in 2025, rewrote that sentence. Here is what changed, who benefits, and what it means if your Canadian parent or grandparent left Canada before you were born.

The problem Bill C-3 solves

Before 2009, Canada’s citizenship law had grown by accretion — the 1947 Act, the 1977 Act, and various fixes in between — and the result was a maze. The government’s 2009 reform simplified it but introduced the first-generation limit: citizenship by descent could pass to the first generation born outside Canada, but no further. A Canadian born in Toronto could pass citizenship to a child born in Michigan; that child, being a citizen by descent, could not pass it to their child born in Michigan — even if the whole family moved back to Toronto the next day.

Courts found that distinction arbitrary. In December 2023 the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled the first-generation limit unconstitutional (Bjorkquist v. Canada (Attorney General)). The federal government chose not to appeal. Bill C-3 is the legislative response: Parliament’s attempt to fix the limit in a way that respects both the court ruling and the principle that citizenship should track a real connection to Canada.

What the new law actually says

Bill C-3 does two things. It repeals the blanket second-generation cutoff for everyone born before December 15, 2025 — no residence test applies to them; the old limit is gone outright. And for children born abroad on or after that date, it substitutes a substantial-connection test: the born-abroad Canadian parent must have spent at least three years of physical presence in Canada before the child’s birth or adoption. The law counts days: 1,095 of them.

Three consequences worth spelling out:

• If your Canadian parent was born in Canada, nothing changes for you — the first-generation limit never applied to that parent, and the chain was never at risk.
• If your Canadian parent was born abroad to a Canadian parent and you were born before December 15, 2025, the limit no longer blocks your claim — Bill C-3 repealed it for you regardless of where your parent lived.
• If you were born on or after December 15, 2025 and your born-abroad Canadian parent never accumulated the 1,095 days, the limit can still apply to you. For everyone born before that date it cannot — where it matters is the next generation: your own children born abroad after that date will need you to have the days. The law is deliberately aimed at ongoing connection, not citizenship passed indefinitely through families who never returned.

The first-generation limit, in historical order

To understand who Bill C-3 covers, it helps to see the timeline. Canadian citizenship itself only dates to 1947 — before that, Canadians were British subjects, and descent rules followed British law. The 1947 Act allowed citizenship to pass to children born abroad, but with loss provisions and retention requirements that ensnared many families — the origin of the Lost Canadians. The 1977 Act loosened the rules but didn’t end retention — it replaced the old scheme with a narrower one: anyone born abroad on or after February 15, 1977 in the second or later generation had to apply to keep their citizenship before turning 28. That age-28 rule quietly stripped citizenship from people who never knew it existed, until the 2009 amendments repealed it. The first-generation limit as we know it arrived with those same 2009 amendments, in force April 17, 2009.

Bill C-3’s key dates: royal assent November 20, 2025; in force December 15, 2025. Before the Act took effect, IRCC ran an interim measure offering discretionary grants of citizenship to people affected by the court ruling; on December 15, 2025 the amendments themselves came into force and conferred citizenship by operation of law. IRCC published guidance for affected families, and applications under the new rules go through the same proof-of-citizenship process described in our CIT 0001 guide.

Who is covered — and who isn’t

Bill C-3 reaches further than the court ruling required. It reaches people who had applied and been refused under the old limit and people who never applied at all — the new citizenship arises automatically by operation of law, and applying for a certificate is simply how you obtain proof of it. But it is not a blanket restoration. Generally not covered: children born abroad on or after December 15, 2025 whose born-abroad parent lacks the 1,095 days; people whose claim fails for reasons other than the first-generation limit, such as an ancestor who formally renounced citizenship; and adoption cases, which follow their own provisions — Bill C-3 contains parallel rules for adopted persons and the separate adoption-grant route still exists, so situations involving adoption need case-specific guidance.

The honest summary: for anyone born before December 15, 2025, “born abroad to a Canadian born abroad” is no longer a dead end — the limit is repealed, and the remaining work is documentary. For children born abroad from that date on, the question becomes how much their Canadian parent actually lived in Canada before the birth — and documenting your ancestor’s life in Canada becomes central to establishing that connection.

Frequently asked questions