r/Canadiancitizenship

You did it! You really did it!!

You jumped every last genealogical and documentation hurdle, dotted every i and crossed every t, and were so careful with matching the specs for your charming photo - and now the IRCC has bestowed its official blessings on your work and sent your Canadian Citizenship Certificate to you.

This weekly thread is a space to announce and celebrate your achievement: you (or the person you have been helping) is the newest recognized citizen of Canada.

You can also discuss details of what you included with your application packet so that the newest newbies can learn from your success.

Been waiting for five months to receive an AOR, and the Embassy I applied through won’t even confirm if they ever sent it to IRCC.

The Embassy is no longer responding to emails, and my receipt number doesn’t work trying to check the IRCC tracker. I also can’t get through to IRCC using the Toronto airport hotline or their general hotline. The web form only sends me automatic replies.

If IRCC, for example, misspelled my email address when registering my data, will I just never ever hear back? Any AOR or decision will just go into the void…

I have tried all the options I have found in previous posts. Is there anything left that I haven’t tried?!

Some of the worst stress of the entire citizenship-by-descent process is not hearing about your application for long stretches of time - or hearing that your application has been sent to the Program Support Unit and may be sitting there for an extended stay.

Whether your envelope seems to have taken a scenic detour on its way to Nova Scotia, you didn't receive an AOR after many weeks of waiting, or you simply haven't heard about your application processing in months, this is a place to commiserate and potentially receive some ideas of next steps to take. (Those generally might include following up with IRCC by web form, ordering the GCMS notes, seeking an MP's help, and so on.)

I am now ready to send in all of my materials to the embassy. Other than the courier having a delivery confirmation, does the embassy give a confirmation when they receive it or when they send out the application?

The only thing stopping me from sending this submission is the arrival of my mother's birth certificate. One every single document and as far as any of our family were concerned, my now deceased mother was born in Portsmouth NH in 1928.

Naturally, I applied for her BC through the NH Vital Records Dept. as prescribed, but got back a form letter that said there was no such record on file. A sticky note on the letter said there was a record of this birth in the State of Maine.

That's weird...but hey...they are right across the river and, so maybe Mom was born in Eagleton rather than Pawnee as we all thought all this time (You Parks & Rec people will get the joke).

Repeated the process with the State of ME vital records (via crappy VitalCheck website) and today received the same letter that I got from NH...no such record on file.

WTF!!!!

So I call NH and got a very nice lady who explained that they contacted Portsmouth Town Clerk when they couldn't find a record and they sent back a copy of what was very clearly a ME state BC. So I asked what town she was born in and this is where it got interesting.

Apparently she was born at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and, at the time, there was a huge legal dispute over the property being in ME vs. NH. So, depending on the person in charge at the time, the BC's issued from the Shipyard could have been either ME or NH.

So...I'm hopeful that the NH folks will be kind enough to send me a copy of the BC they got from Portsmouth. Failing that I am NOT holding up this submission any longer and wait for a conclusion. I have plenty of other documents including a 1930 Census, my parents' marriage certificate and my mother's Death Certificate all of which clearly list my grand parents (G0's) as her parents. I will simply add a paragraph to my cover letter to explain the stupid pissing contest between these two states and hope they will let that pass.

THIS IS EXHAUSTING!!

And, honestly, I am NOT one of these Genealogy Nerds that finds this process fascinating. This is just a means to an end to me. So no, I am not enjoying this part of the journey one bit.

You may have noticed that the wiki was recently reorganized. The main wiki topics and sub-topics are now roughly ordered by the citizenship by descent process steps, and organized into a Table of Contents landing page. The sub-topics have their own smaller pages for the FAQ entries.

The change was quietly rolled out by updating the sidebar links and sticky comment links. If you see any old links please let us know and we'll get them fixed.

The new format makes it easier to find the information you are looking for, and easier to share direct FAQ answer links with fellow community members.

Wiki Update Posts

We plan to highlight new and changed wiki content with posts going forward. We had great responses from the recent Quebec genealogy wiki update post and we want to try doing more of that to spread awareness of wiki updates, and to gather community feedback to incorporate into the wiki.

Acknowledgements

Finally, a huge thank you to the original wiki authors who poured their experience and hearts into the content, especially u/IWantOffStopTheEarth. And to the shared experience of the community that informed the wiki.

Hi all , hoping to collect some answers from fellow trans urgent applicants . I got my AOR May 6 , In process May 11, and May 12 a gender marker request form was sent by them which I filled out and emailed back same day. While I know it’s still early I’m hoping because it’s urgent I hear back sooner than later since I’m trying to move out of the unsafe spot I’m in in the US. So if anyone has a similar case and could let me know when they got their decision I’d appreciate it !

Apologies if this is too off topic, but it’s affecting my ability to do research and I couldn’t find any information about this online, so I thought it was worth checking with the community.

Is anyone else having trouble accessing LAC records search? For example when I try visiting this link https://www.canada.ca/en/library-archives/collection/research-help/genealogy-family-history/immigration/passenger-lists-1865-1935.html
and clicking the green “Search passenger lists 1865 to 1935” link I get a “connection not found” error. I’m not using a VPN and get the error both on WiFi and cellular.

Edit (5/20 9:30AM PST): Looks like a banner has been added on Canada.ca:

>We are experiencing technical difficulties with certain of our online services We are actively working to resolve these issues. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

I also sent a message to LAC that received a swift response:

>Thank you for contacting Library and Archives Canada. We are aware that our census search page is down, as well as other search applications. Our site is being aggressively crawled by AI bots which is causing significant issues for us. Please keep checking the site; we hope to have the problems resolved as soon as possible.

We all appreciate the excitement, after weeks of grueling research and last-minute surprises, of finishing your proof of citizenship application process and sending that big envelope on its way.

Equally fantastic is the moment that you get your AOR and know your application has made it past the initial IRCC checks putting your mind at ease about whether you missed something along the way.

 

This weekly thread is a space for those of us at the earliest stages to celebrate passing the first and biggest hurdle.

Good afternoon, all!

The IRCC officially updated their intake requirements for proof of citizenship applications on May 15th (pre-dated to March):

>Effective March 1, 2026, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) will reduce its role in the intake of proof of citizenship applications from individuals outside of Canada and the United States and will cease conducting completeness checks for citizenship applications submitted abroad. To help address the operational impacts, citizenship staff at the Digitization and Identity Operations Division (DIOD) will perform a minimal completeness check of all paper proof of citizenship applications, including those from abroad. Applications missing elements required for legal validity will be rejected to maintain operational efficiency.

>...

>Incomplete Applications – Grounds for Rejection

>Applications missing one or more of the essential elements listed below will be rejected as incomplete:

>Application form (CIT 0001) not provided or is missing information required to be able to assess the application.

>Mandatory signature is missing.

>Photographs missing or not compliant with specifications.

>Proof of payment missing (i.e., IPRMS payment receipt).

>...

>With the exception of the minimum legal requirements outlined above, DIOD has the discretion to accept applications missing other elements into processing and request the missing information or documents from the applicant.

>In the case of applications originating from outside Canada and the United States, this may be more efficient as it would avoid delays and costs associated with international postage as well as the risk of lost or undelivered mail.

So it seems that they started using these guidelines back in March, and I know we have been mostly aware of these requirements, but it's still nice to see that someone at IRCC is actually updating their website and that they seem to be trying to make things a bit clearer (though they still don't specify things like whether or not both photos need to have information on the back). The most interesting part to me is the last two paragraphs, which seem to indicate that they have reduced the intake requirements to handle the influx of applications and perhaps reduce the burden of back and forth mailing.

However, the post also mysteriously says, "Note: The procedures outlined in these Program Delivery Instructions do not supersede existing intake procedures for paper applications received from Canada or the United States." But they don't outline what the existing intake procedures are outside of the these ones that were most recently posted, and the post specifically makes mention of mailed applications being made more efficient through this update, so who knows?

Link to IRCC webpage: IRCC Canadian Citizenship Proof Intake

Hi all, I have a friend who is applying with his family. He has 4 people of his family applying together. Should he fill out this form? So therefore all correspondence from IRCC goes to him?

I’m unsure how to advise him what the correct way is as I didn’t have to do this with my app since I’m the only one in my family who applied.

Is there an explanation anywhere on how to fill this out and attach? I’m assuming he only needs one form for the entire app?

Hey everyone,

I’m applying for citizenship later this year. I have a 9 months gap in my temporary resident history (between my PGWP expiring and a public policy work permit being issued). During this time, I was inside Canada awaiting a restoration decision and working legally via consecutive IRCC Interim Work Authorizations.

Because restoration periods don't count for citizenship physical presence credit, I am claiming 0 days of credit for this timeframe. My total days without counting this gap come out to 1,109 days (safely above 1,095).

Since I never physically left Canada, I cannot list it as an absence. I plan to leave a blank gap in the calculator's status history section for those 293 days, so the system automatically calculates it as 0 credits. I am also uploading a solid Letter of Explanation.

For anyone who has gone through this:

• Did a transparent LOE help an officer resolve the manual check quickly, or did this automatically push your file into the slow, non-routine pipeline?

Appreciate any advice or shared experiences!

I have an original record of birth for my mother to Canadian parents. Grandparents from NB and have their BC. My mother’s record of birth with the birth parents crossed out and adoptive parents handwritten in. This is all in Everett, Mass if that matters.
I just don’t want everything rejected because of some bizarre practise of scribbling adoption on BCs

Long post so buckle up…

This week’s spreadsheet news is absolutely more upbeat! We had an above average week with 28 approvals. Importantly, we had more pre-C3 approvals. There has been a lot of chatter on this platform about the increased number of applicants in front of us according to the online tracker. The prevailing theory is that the Pre-C3 folks got admitted into the mainstream queue. Obviously this is speculation because none of us truly know, but the noticeable increase in C3 approvals give some support to that theory.

Maybe the most quoted part of my post last week was the four year wait time for everyone currently in the spreadsheet. I recalculated and while it hasn’t drastically changed, there is really good reason to think it is going to speed up. So the first thing to note is that this is just a spreadsheet of self-reported data which has all kinds of bias and human error. Secondly, processes change all the time. That could apply to the IRCC at some point. So the current rate of approval isn’t necessarily connected to future rates of approval. It’s just a snapshot in time with the data that we have.

As the weeks go by, I have been tallying the approvals on Sunday. So that means I missed approvals that got added in previous weeks that had already passed because I didn’t go back in time to re-tally once the week was over. Today I decided to go back and recalculate. I’m happy to report that many people who gained approval weeks ago have added their data to the spreadsheet. So my running average of about 20 approvals per week is an underestimate. And the average number of approvals will continue to increase as long as more people who got approved to come back to add to the spreadsheet. It seems there are people in our community who go back and add their information weeks later. This is good! We need as much data as possible.

It may not be a bad idea to go on other social media platforms to find groups dealing with C3 and encourage them to get on the spreadsheet. We especially need people who have already been approved. That’s tricky because it’s easy to see why approval would demotivate people to update the spreadsheet. I plan on updating it when I get my approval, however, I may not do the Sunday optimism posts anymore. I can easily see how that would demotivate me from act actively keeping on top of things. So it might be the same sort of psychological demotivation with folks who get approved. It doesn’t hurt to remind everyone to go back and add or update if they haven’t done so in a while.

That said, I have some updated numbers. Keep in mind, the averages are complicated because it seems the IRCC has been working at different clips over different weeks. I calculated each week starting on Monday. These calculations exclude approvals before C3 was passed because there were so few. The average number of approvals since the first Monday in December is 19.5 per week. The average since January is 22.3 per week. The average since February is 25.7 per week. The average since March is 27.1 per week. There is a dip in the average since April at 23.3 per week. That month, we hit quite a few slow weeks. And so far in May, we have 25 per week. Probably the best aggregated average is since February 9. I picked that Monday because the previous week had single digit approvals. Every week since then has been double digit and seems to be more normalized. The number since that outlier is 27.3 per week. So I think that’s a much more accurate number. And the kicker is, it will keep increasing as more people add their information.

I hope this helps us all be a little more hopeful!

UPDATE: I called UPS and they were able to tell me that the package has actually been scanned into Canada and is with the customs broker now. I didn't select a broker, so I'm assuming it's auto-assigned or something, but it sounds like maybe tomorrow or the next day it may reflect that change. Thanks for the comments!

This is likely not too far out of the ordinary but I'd really like to know if anyone else has seen this before. Last Tuesday (May 13th), we shipped our applications with a scheduled delivery for the 20th. The next day it showed "On the Way" with a delivery date of the 22nd. Annoying but whatever, it's 2 days. Now it says, "Your package is still on the way and we are actively working to get you a new delivery date." But there was no new scan or anything. Last update was still on the 14th. Has anyone gotten this before? I know that it's still not been long at all, but getting our package required crazy coordination across multiple states, countries, and continents. At what point should I be worried that my package may be lost and is worth escalating?

https://preview.redd.it/t2r20tkwhw1h1.png?width=1049&format=png&auto=webp&s=2df93e1bcee0ffeb875de8e5fecc41440ce35c9f

This thread is a special spin-off of the Tuesday weekly Genealogy Assistance thread.

This is a space to discuss the general issues facing people requesting records from Canadian provincial archives as well as US state, local and religious/church archives and to discuss turnaround times, delays, and other issues. You can also discuss costs including the newly raised costs for records from Quebec's archives and post your success stories and timelines here.

You can use this as a forum to commiserate and to discuss strategies and outcomes.

Have questions about how to fill out the form or what to write in your cover letter? Looking for feedback on the documentation you've put together for your Citizenship Certificate application (CIT0001)? Want to know how to organize your documentation or how to pack it up for shipping? Worried about whether your photos will work? Have questions about what ID you can use? Not sure where to ship it to or what service or mail courier to use? Post it here!

Want to see what people who were already approved have done? Check out the weekly application approval thread that posts every Thursday.

Before you comment, please read the wiki and search previous posts in the subreddit to see if your questions have been answered there.

If you've read the FAQ and searched the forum and you still have questions about how to fill out the form, whether your supporting documentation will work, what to write in your cover letter or whether your photos will work feel free to post them here.

 

Please be aware that you may not get responses. It's a lot of work to wade through dense lists of documents and family histories.

Also please note we are not IRCC, which will make the final determination on your application.

PSA, not a question - we've take another archdiocese down: https://www.aod.org/office-of-archives

"Due to current staffing, the Archives Office cannot fill genealogical requests, including records relating to proof of citizenship requests, in a timely manner. There is presently an up to six-month delay, and we cannot receive new requests at this time. We will reopen our genealogical request service on July 1, after which time we can provide an estimated time for completing requests, which we anticipate will continue to involve a significant waiting period. "

And I thought I'd found a work around for Vitalcheck/Wayne county slowness and the London archdiocese up in Ontario. 🤷🏻‍♀️