Canadian Citizenship Through Your Great-Grandparent

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.

Naturalization as a citizen of another country before 1977 may have caused automatic loss under the 1947 Act; paragraph 3(1)(f) reversed it retroactively (s. 3(7)(c) and (d)). We do not publish a figure for how many people that reached: no authority publishes one.

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

Naturalized Canadian anchor — birth timing: If the earliest Canadian in your chain naturalized as Canadian (rather than being born in Canada), the timing of that naturalization matters. The Citizenship Act (s. 3(1)(b) and s. 3(1)(g)) requires each person to have been a citizen at the time of birth of the next person in the chain. If the first outside-Canada birth in your chain occurred before the anchor naturalized, the anchor was not yet a citizen when that child was born — citizenship would not have transmitted at that point. The eligibility checker asks about this timing when the anchor is a naturalized Canadian.

An inability to document any link with government-issued vital records is a practical chain-breaker. IRCC requires long-form birth certificates showing each parent's name. If any record is unavailable — lost, destroyed, or from a jurisdiction with poor vital records — IRCC may request alternative evidence or may be unable to verify the chain. As of June 2026, IRCC requires documents issued by the original authority for every generation and will not accept an application supported solely by third-party records such as genealogy-site copies; when a birth record cannot be located, it accepts alternatives like a baptismal or census record along with a written explanation and proof the record was requested.

Born on or after December 15, 2025 — not a cutoff, a two-part test: Read this one against the Act rather than a summary of it — including ours. Section 3(3) of the Citizenship Act, as amended by Bill C-3, is a two-part conjunctive test, not a reinstated bar. It excludes a person born outside Canada on or after December 15, 2025 only where BOTH limbs are met: (i) the parent they take citizenship from was themselves born outside Canada AND was a citizen as one of the subsection's clauses describes (s. 3(3) is quoted whole at the end of this section); AND (ii) — in the Act's words — “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. So a child born in 2026 to a citizen parent who was born IN Canada is a citizen with no presence test at all, and a child born in 2026 to a foreign-born citizen parent who has 1,095 days (about three years, and they need not be consecutive) in Canada is also a citizen. IRCC states the ordinary case in plainer 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 form IRCC publishes for counting those days is CIT 0555, “How to calculate physical presence in Canada for a Canadian parent.” Section 3(3) reads in full: “(3) Paragraph (1)(b) does not apply to a person born outside Canada on or after the day on which An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025) comes into force (a) if (i) at the time of the person’s birth (A) only one of the person’s parents was a citizen and that parent was a citizen under any of paragraphs (1)(b), (c.1), (e), (g) to (j) and (o) to (r) and was born outside Canada, (B) only one of the person’s parents was a citizen and that parent was a citizen under paragraph (1)(f) and was born outside Canada to a parent who was a citizen at the time of their birth, or (C) both of the person’s parents were citizens under any of paragraphs (1)(b), (c.1), (e) to (j) and (o) to (r) and were born outside Canada and, in the case of a parent who was a citizen under paragraph (1)(f), that parent was born to a parent who was a citizen at the time of their birth, 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; or (b) if (i) at any time, only one of the person’s parents was a citizen and that parent was a citizen under any of the following provisions or both of the person’s parents were citizens under any of the following provisions: (A) paragraph 4(b) or 5(b) of the Canadian Citizenship Act, S.C. 1946, c. 15, (B) paragraph 5(1)(b) of the Canadian Citizenship Act, S.C. 1946, c. 15, as enacted by S.C. 1950, c. 29, s. 2, (C) paragraph 4(1)(b) of the Canadian Citizenship Act, S.C. 1946, c. 15, as enacted by S.C. 1952-53, c. 23, s. 2(1), (D) paragraph 5(1)(b) of the Canadian Citizenship Act, S.C. 1946, c. 15, as enacted by S.C. 1950, c. 29, s. 2 and amended by S.C. 1952-53, c. 23, s. 3(1), (E) paragraph 4(1)(b) of the Canadian Citizenship Act, R.S.C. 1952, c. 33, as enacted by S.C. 1952-53, c. 23, s. 13(1), (F) paragraph 5(1)(b) of the Canadian Citizenship Act, R.S.C. 1952, c. 33, as amended by S.C. 1952-53, c. 23, s. 14(1), (G) subsection 39B(1) of the Canadian Citizenship Act, R.S.C. 1952, c. 33, as enacted by S.C. 1967-68, c. 4, s. 10, or (H) paragraph 4(1)(b) or 5(1)(b) or subsection 42(1) of the former Act, 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.” IRCC’s CIT 0001 guide, Appendix F, “Physical Presence in Canada for a Canadian Parent”, question 4, reads: “4. Was your Canadian parent born in Canada or granted citizenship, also known as naturalization, (except for parents who were granted citizenship as an adopted person) before your birth? Yes. This section does not apply to you. Submit your application.”

The Crown-servant exception is wider than it sounds: Section 3(5) switches subsection (3) off entirely for a person born to a parent who was employed outside Canada in or with the Canadian Armed Forces, the federal public administration or the public service of a province — and, under paragraphs (b) and (c), for a person one of whose GRANDparents (including an adoptive grandparent) was so employed at the time of the parent's birth or adoption. The Act's own marginal note reads “Exception — child or grandchild of person in service abroad.” Provincial service counts; being locally engaged does not.

A death in the chain is not automatically a break: Bill C-3 added section 3(1.5) for exactly the situation a four-generation chain runs into. 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 still a citizen under the relevant paragraph, if that ancestor would have been a citizen as a result of Bill C-3 coming into force. In plain terms: your grandparent dying in 2004, before the law that would have made them Canadian, does not sever the line. You still have to document them.