Canadian Citizenship Through Your Grandparent

Before Bill C-3, the first-generation limit — introduced by Bill C-37 in 2009 — meant that Canadian citizenship acquired by descent could not pass beyond one generation born outside Canada. If your parent was born abroad to a Canadian citizen, your parent was Canadian, but that citizenship could not pass to you if you were also born abroad.

Bill C-3 (An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025), Royal Assent November 20, 2025, came into force December 15, 2025) removed this first-generation limit outright for anyone born before December 15, 2025. This means the chain of descent can now extend through multiple generations born outside Canada.

If you were born on or after December 15, 2025, the answer is not “no” — it is a two-part test. Section 3(3) of the Citizenship Act, as amended, excludes such a person only where BOTH limbs are met: (i) the parent they take citizenship from was themselves born outside Canada AND held citizenship under one of the descent paragraphs s. 3(3) enumerates \u2014 3(1)(b), (c.1), (e), (g) to (j) and (o) to (r). Paragraph 3(1)(c), citizenship by GRANT, is on neither list, so a foreign-born parent who naturalised as Canadian is outside the limb entirely and their child faces no presence test, AND (ii) “neither of the person's parents who was a citizen was physically present in Canada for at least 1,095 days before the person's birth.” Fail either limb and the exclusion does not apply. IRCC states the same rule in its own words: “If you were born outside Canada on or after December 15, 2025, and your Canadian parent was born outside Canada, you must prove that your Canadian parent spent 1,095 days in Canada before you were born.” The 1,095 days need not be consecutive, and IRCC's form CIT 0555 — “How to calculate physical presence in Canada for a Canadian parent” — is how they are counted. Section 3(5) then switches subsection (3) off entirely for the child or grandchild of a person employed outside Canada in or with the Canadian Armed Forces, the federal public administration or the public service of a province, other than as a locally engaged person.

An adoption in the line is not automatically a break either. This is the case people most often assume is hopeless, and it usually is not. The exclusion in paragraph 3(1)(b) is of the claimant's OWN adoptive parent: the paragraph confers citizenship where “at the time of his birth one of his parents, other than a parent who adopted him, was a citizen.” It says nothing about an adoption further up the line. An ancestor who was adopted and then granted citizenship under section 5.1 is a citizen under paragraph 3(1)(c.1); one who instead immigrated and naturalised is a citizen under 3(1)(c). Both are citizens, and their own biological children take citizenship from them in the ordinary way. What decides it is timing, not the adoption: the ancestor must already have held Canadian citizenship when their child in your line was born, because 3(1)(b) tests citizenship “at the time of his birth.” Expect to prove it with that ancestor's citizenship certificate rather than a birth record — a birth certificate cannot show a citizenship granted years afterwards, and the names on the two documents may not match without the adoption order to explain them.

A death in the line is not automatically a break. Bill C-3 added section 3(1.5): a person who would not become a citizen “for the sole reason” that their parent — or both that parent and that parent's parent — died before Bill C-3 came into force is nonetheless a citizen, if that ancestor would have been a citizen as a result of the Act coming into force. Your parent dying before December 2025 does not sever your claim through your grandparent. You still have to document them.

A family history this page exists for: your grandparent was born in Canada, moved to the United States (or another country), and became a US citizen before 1977. We do not say how often that shape occurs — nobody publishes a breakdown — only that the law answers it cleanly. Under the 1947 Act, naturalizing as a citizen of another country caused loss of Canadian citizenship. We label that as received history rather than quote it: the 1947 Act and the 1970 “former Act” are pre-1985 repealed statutes and are not published on Justice Laws in any form, so we cannot set the provision in front of you. What we can quote is the current Act putting the loss beyond doubt by reversing it.

Bill C-37 (2009) added Section 3(1)(f). Section 3(1)(f) of the Citizenship Act is quoted in full in the Renunciation section of our guide to Canadian citizenship through a parent. Section 3(7)(c) and (d) read: “(c) a person referred to in paragraph (1)(f) who, at the time he or she ceased to be a citizen, was a citizen by way of grant is deemed to have been granted citizenship under that paragraph at that time; (d) a person referred to in paragraph (1)(f) — other than a person described in paragraph (c) — is deemed to be a citizen under paragraph (1)(f) from the time the person ceased to be a citizen” — so the chain is treated as never having been interrupted. We publish no headcount for how many people that reached; no authority publishes one.

Bottom line: your grandparent naturalizing as a US citizen (or citizen of another country) before 1977 does not break the chain, because Bill C-37 retroactively restored their Canadian citizenship.

When a renunciation matters for a descent claim is set out in the Act's words in the parent guide's renunciation section.

If your parent was born before February 15, 1977, you will hear about the “responsible parent” rule: that under the 1947 Act only the father could transmit citizenship to a child born abroad in wedlock, and the mother only where the child was born out of wedlock or the father had died. We report that as widely described rather than quote it, because we cannot: the 1947 Act is a pre-1985 repealed statute, is not on Justice Laws in consolidated, point-in-time or archived form, and IRCC's current program delivery instructions do not set it out either.

What the current Act says is checkable, and it is the part that governs your application today. Section 3(1)(g), added by Bill C-37, reads: the person “was born outside Canada before February 15, 1977 to a parent who was a citizen at the time of the birth and the person did not, before the coming into force of this paragraph, become a citizen.” It says “a parent”, with no reference to sex, marital status or which parent, and it carries no registration condition. Section 3(7)(e) then deems such a person a citizen “from the time that he or she was born.” If the old rule is why your family believed the line was broken through a mother, that is the provision to read.

Reference: Citizenship Act (R.S.C. 1985, c. C-29), s. 3(1)(g) and s. 3(7)(e), both added by S.C. 2008, c. 14 (Bill C-37). Quoted from the consolidated text at laws-lois.justice.gc.ca, read September 9, 2026.