Canadian Citizenship Through Your Parent

Parent born in Canada: Your parent is a Canadian citizen by birth. Citizenship transmits to you automatically under Section 3(1)(b) — or Section 3(1)(g) if you were born before February 15, 1977 — regardless of where you were born, and regardless of your own birth date. Section 3(3), the provision that limits descent, only reaches a person whose citizen parent “was born outside Canada,” so a Canadian-born parent takes you outside it entirely. There is no 1,095-day presence test in your case.

Parent born outside Canada (parent is a citizen by descent): Before Bill C-3, the first-generation limit blocked this path — your parent could hold citizenship by descent, but could not pass it to you if you were also born outside Canada. Bill C-3 (in force December 15, 2025) removed that limit outright for anyone born before December 15, 2025: no presence test, at any generational depth, provided the chain is documented. If you were born on or after December 15, 2025, you are still a citizen unless BOTH limbs of the new Section 3(3) are met — your citizen parent was born outside Canada AND was a citizen under one of the DESCENT paragraphs the subsection enumerates, AND, 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.” That first limb has two halves, and the second one is the reason this page separates a parent who was born abroad and NATURALIZED as Canadian from one who was born abroad as a citizen by descent: s. 3(3)(a)(i)(A) lists paragraphs 3(1)(b), (c.1), (e), (g) to (j) and (o) to (r), and 3(1)(c) — citizenship by grant — is not on it, so a naturalized parent falls outside the limb entirely and no presence test arises. IRCC's form CIT 0555 is how those days are counted where they do. Section 3(5) switches the whole subsection off for the child or grandchild of a person serving abroad with the Canadian Armed Forces, the federal public administration or a provincial public service.

Parent naturalized as a Canadian citizen: If your parent was not born Canadian but naturalized as a Canadian citizen, timing matters. Sections 3(1)(b) and 3(1)(g) of the Citizenship Act both require the parent to have been a citizen at the time of your birth. If your parent naturalized after you were born, they were not yet a citizen when you arrived — citizenship would not have transmitted automatically at birth. Minor children do not acquire citizenship when a parent naturalizes. Section 5(2) is the separate route, and it is narrower than it is usually described: the Minister grants citizenship to a minor child of a citizen only where the child “is a permanent resident within the meaning of subsection 2(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.” A minor living abroad with no Canadian permanent residence cannot use it. The eligibility checker asks about this timing in the naturalized-parent path.

What that is not is the far more common story of a Canadian parent who became American, British or Australian and was told they had “lost” their Canadian citizenship. Under the older Acts that loss was automatic on acquiring a foreign nationality, imposed on people who never chose it — and Section 3(1)(f) reversed it. 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 broken. A foreign naturalization certificate is not a certificate of renunciation, and in a box of family papers they are easy to confuse.

Adopted by a Canadian parent: this page is not your route. IRCC states it plainly: “If you were born outside Canada and adopted by a Canadian parent, you're not automatically a Canadian citizen.” Adoption runs through a direct citizenship grant under Section 5.1 (subsections 5.1(4), (5) and (6) are quoted whole on our Bill C-3 legal-updates page), and CIT 0001, the form “under Section 3,” is the wrong application for an adoptee.

If your parent was the one adopted, that is a different question and this page may well still be your route. Paragraph 3(1)(b) excludes only “a parent who adopted him” — the claimant's own adoptive parent. A parent who was adopted and then granted citizenship, whether under Section 5.1 or by naturalising, is a citizen, and you take citizenship from them in the ordinary way. What matters is that they already held it when you were born.