Overview
- The Registrar of Canadian Citizenship began sending notices requiring some recent recipients to surrender paper certificates for review, with the letters first sent on June 13 and signed by Peggy Sun.
- The reviews target proofs submitted under Bill C-3, the December 2025 law that expanded citizenship by descent, and affect a small subset of roughly 4,075 certificates issued since the law took effect.
- IRCC says files are being re-examined because some applicants relied on documents not obtained from original source authorities or did not show efforts to obtain official records, and the department is allowing submission of additional evidence.
- Recipients report sudden disruption to lives and plans after receiving notices, including suspended use of passports, flagged files, interrupted moves to Canada, and anxiety for people who already relocated or changed jobs.
- Lawyers warn the department’s use of surrender letters rather than formal revocation could prompt constitutional or judicial-review challenges, and IRCC has temporarily paused finalizing some citizenship-by-descent cases while it investigates how approvals occurred.