Notice to IRCC Regarding the Request to Surrender Newly Issued Citizenship Certificates

I am openly sharing the letter I just fired off to IRCC’s Litigation and Case Management Branch in Ottawa. Share this letter widely and forward it your Member of Parliament.

17 June 2026

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada

Attention: Director General, Citizenship Policy / Complex Case Management Division

Litigation and Case Management Branch

300 Slater Street, 12th Floor

Ottawa, ON, K1A 1L1

Dear Sir or Madam:

Re:  Documentary requirements for proof-of-citizenship applications based on citizenship by descent (Bill C-3) — Notice to IRCC

We act for numerous clients who have applied for certificates of citizenship under the citizenship-by-descent s.3 provisions of the Citizenship Act. We are aware that IRCC has begun issuing correspondence to certain certificate holders under subsection 26(1) of the Citizenship Regulations, requiring the surrender of their certificates and placing their files under review, on the asserted basis that the documents filed in support of their applications were not obtained from the “original source authorities” responsible for the relevant historical records.

While none of the affected individuals are clients of Borders Law Firm, we write to put IRCC on notice, on behalf of our citizenship-by-descent clients generally, that it is an error in law to impose a documentary standard that appears nowhere in the published Document Checklist (CIT 0014) or its instruction guide, and to set out our position. This letter is not submitted in response to any individual decision; it is a statement of the firm’s position with respect to the documentary requirements that govern these applications in anticipation of a similar and unjustifiable imposition of a new documentary standard not found in CIT 0014 or in IRCC’s policy guidance on applications still in process.

The standard now being asserted

As we understand the correspondence being issued, IRCC is asserting two requirements:

1. The documentation submitted in support of the proof of citizenship application is not from the original source authorities responsible for creating or maintaining historical records, such as civil registries, vital statistics agencies, or other authorized government bodies.
2. When source documents are not available and/or when an applicant is not able to obtain documents from a source authority, then the applicant must provide: (i) a written explanation outlining why the source documents cannot be obtained; and (ii) evidence of efforts made to obtain the documents.

Neither requirement — that civil documents must originate from a “source authority,” or that an applicant must provide a written explanation and proof of efforts whenever alternative evidence is submitted — is expressed anywhere in CIT 0014 or the governing instruction guide.

The published standard requires only colour copies — not source-authority documents

CIT 0014 directs applicants to provide “clear and legible, high quality, colour copies” of their documents. It says nothing about the channel through which a civil document must be obtained, and it does not require that records be issued directly by a vital statistics agency or civil registry.

Far from confining applicants to a closed class of source-authority records, the checklist expressly contemplates a broad and illustrative range of corroborating evidence. Under Scenario 3, to establish that a parent is a Canadian citizen, the checklist accepts, among other things:

• the “parent’s country specific birth certificate displaying the name of your Canadian grandparent(s) AND proof that at least one of your grandparents is a Canadian citizen”; and
• “any other evidence that your parent is a Canadian citizen, such as those described in Scenarios 4 and 5 below.”

Scenario 4 lists as acceptable “proof of your period of residence in Canada before January 1, 1947, OR in Newfoundland and Labrador before April 1, 1949.” Scenario 5 lists, as proof of a husband’s nationality, “any other proof of his citizenship/immigration status in Canada or another country, such as immigration documents, visas, passports, etc.”

These provisions are decisive. IRCC’s own checklist invites residence evidence, immigration documents, visas, passports and “any other evidence” — none of which is a vital-statistics record. Had IRCC intended to confine applicants to documents issued by a particular government authority, or to certified copies issued by a governing authority, the checklist would have said so. It does not.

The checklist does not require a “long-form” birth certificate for a descent claim

The demand now being made is frequently framed around the absence of a “long-form” birth certificate. With respect, that label is not the language of the checklist for an ordinary descent claim. The words long form birth certificate appear in CIT 0014 only in Scenarios 4 and 5 — the British-subject and pre-1947 legacy cases. For the ordinary descent path, Scenario 3 (a person born outside Canada to a Canadian parent), the checklist requires a “country specific birth certificate displaying the name of your Canadian parent(s)” and, for the parent, a “provincial/territorial birth certificate.” The operative requirement is therefore that the birth certificate display the relevant parent’s name — not that it bear the label “long-form.” To demand a “long-form” birth certificate as a condition of a Scenario 3 claim is to impose a requirement the published checklist does not contain.

This conclusion is reinforced by the structure of Scenarios 4 and 5 themselves. Each is keyed to the applicant’s own status, not to that of a remote ancestor. Scenario 4 applies where “you were a British Subject … and you lived in Canada … before January 1, 1947”; Scenario 5 applies where “you are a woman and … before January 1, 1947, you married a man who was born, or had been naturalized British, in Canada”. The “long form birth certificate” those scenarios request is the applicant’s own. Our clients were born in recent decades and claim through descent; none was a British subject resident in Canada before 1947, and none is a woman who married before 1947. They are therefore Scenario 3 applicants, whatever the antiquity of the line of descent. The era of an ancestor does not convert a Scenario 3 descent applicant into a Scenario 4 or Scenario 5 applicant.

Nor does the reference to Scenarios 4 and 5 within Scenario 3 import their document lists wholesale. Scenario 3 permits a parent’s (or earlier ancestor’s) Canadian status to be shown by “any other evidence … such as those described in Scenarios 4 and 5 below” — an illustrative menu of the kinds of evidence that establish an ancestor’s status. That menu is itself led by “proof of your period of residence in Canada before January 1, 1947” — residence-based proof of exactly the kind the historical census establishes. It is not a back-door requirement to produce a long-form birth certificate for a great-grandparent or more distant ancestor.

Finally, the demand cannot be met as a matter of plain fact. A long-form civil birth certificate cannot exist for an Original Canadian ancestor born in the 1800s, before the relevant province established the civil registration of births. The checklist cannot be construed to require a document that never existed, and Scenario 3 anticipates precisely this circumstance by inviting “any other evidence” of an ancestor’s citizenship. For ancestors of that era, the controlling proof is the residence, census, parish and related records that do exist — which our clients provide.

Historical census records satisfy the checklist’s own residence test

Applications of this kind routinely rely on historical Canadian census returns to establish the line of descent and the relevant ancestors’ residence in Canada. Those census returns are precisely the “proof of your period of residence in Canada before January 1, 1947” that Scenario 4 expressly invites, and they are official records of the Government of Canada. It is internally inconsistent for IRCC to accept the census as proof of residence under its own checklist while rejecting other civil records on the ground that they were not drawn from a vital-statistics agency.

The documents at issue are all formal civil and governmental records

Without question, a birth certificate displaying the name of the Canadian parent(s) — the document Scenario 3 of CIT 0014 requires — is, and remains, the anchor document in a descent claim, and our clients provide every such certificate that exists and can be obtained. But these applications do not rest on that document alone. They are supported by a body of formal civil and governmental records, including:

• a birth certificate displaying the name of the Canadian parent(s) — the document Scenario 3 requires (a “long-form” certificate where the pre-1947 Scenarios 4 or 5 apply) — to the extent one exists and could be obtained;
• Canadian census returns;
• baptismal / church records;
• marriage records and certificates;
• death records and certificates; and
• United States corroborating records, including U.S. naturalization records, U.S. census returns, and U.S. marriage and death certificates.

Each of these is a formal civil or governmental record. For each, CIT 0014 asks only for a colour copy, and at no point demands that the document be obtained from, or issued by, a particular source agency.

Applicants are entitled to rely on IRCC’s own instructions

The words IRCC chose — “such as,” “for example,” “include,” and “any other evidence/proof” — are, on their ordinary meaning, illustrative rather than exhaustive. The Federal Court has repeatedly held that applicants are entitled to rely on the instructions IRCC provides. At paragraph 32 of Thompson v Canada, 2021 FC 914, Lafrenière J. held:

It was the responsibility of the IRCC to provide clear instructions that are consistent with the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and its regulations and avoid creating confusion. Applicants should not need a law degree to understand the requirements to apply for immigration or have to cross-check government guidelines by delving into the complexities of the legislation and regulations to ensure consistency.

That principle affirms that it would have imposed no burden on the Department to clearly articulate what was required of applicants. An applicant who submitted the very categories of evidence the checklist contemplates cannot fairly be told, after the fact, that a certificate was issued in error solely because a particular category of source document was not provided.

More directly, the Federal Court has now held that an officer has no authority to impose documentary requirements absent from the published checklist. In Devgon v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2025 FC 2005, an application was returned as incomplete because the curriculum vitae listed on the checklist contained a one-year chronological gap. Justice Battista set aside that decision, holding that a finding of incompleteness requires “an unbroken chain” from s. 10 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations, through the governing instruments, to the unmet requirement (para 40). Although a CV was required, the checklist did not specify that it had to be gap-free; the officer had therefore “imported” an unstated requirement into the definition of the document (para 41).

The Court’s reasoning turned on the contrast between silence and express specification, which governs this case. IRCC had expressly stated, for Schedule A, that chronological gaps would render an application incomplete, but imposed no such condition for the CV. Justice Battista held that IRCC had “clearly turned its mind” to the issue, choosing where to impose the requirement and where not to, and that the officer lacked authority to add to the definition of a complete application (para 43). Where the instrument is silent, officers may not read in additional requirements.

Devgon applies squarely here. Form CIT 0014 does not require civil documents to originate from a “source authority,” does not mandate a “long-form” certificate for Scenario 3 descent claims, and does not require an explanation of efforts when other reliable evidence is provided. As in Devgon, where IRCC imposed a no-gap rule for Schedule A but not for CVs, the checklist here requires a long-form birth certificate only for pre‑1947 Scenarios 4 and 5, while expressly inviting “any other evidence” under Scenario 3. This demonstrates that IRCC knows how to mandate specific documents when it intends to. Imposing source-authority or long-form requirements on Scenario 3 applicants is therefore the same kind of unauthorized supplementation that Devgon rejects.

Nor can that defect be cured through post submission correspondence from IRCC. The Court held that a procedural fairness letter is “not an instrument legally authorized to define a complete application,” and cannot justify returning an application unless the governing instruments themselves are unmet (paras 45–46). IRCC cannot retroactively graft new requirements—such as source-authority or long-form documentation—onto applications that already satisfied the published checklist.

Procedural fairness and legitimate expectations

The duty of procedural fairness applies to decisions of this nature. As set out in Baker v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), [1999] 2 SCR 817, a central component of the duty of procedural fairness is the right to know the case to be met and to have a meaningful opportunity to respond before an adverse decision is made (paragraph 22). The duty is engaged with particular force here, because the published checklist and guide constituted clear, unqualified representations as to what a complete application required; under the doctrine of legitimate expectations a public authority is held to such representations and may not depart from them without adequate notice (see also: Canada (Attorney General) v Mavi, 2011 SCC 30 at para 68, Agraira v Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), 2013 SCC 36 at paras 94-98).

IRCC’s own published procedural-fairness standard provides that applicants must: (1) be provided with a fair and unbiased assessment of their application; (2) be informed of the decision-maker’s concerns; and (3) be given a meaningful opportunity to respond.  Applying a source-authority requirement that appears nowhere in the published guidance retroactively and without prior notice is precisely the unfair surprise the duty of fairness exists to prevent.

The new demand offends the presumption against retrospective application of the law

The correspondence does more than depart from the published checklist: it applies a newly-articulated documentary standard backward — to applications prepared and submitted, and in many cases certificates already granted, under CIT 0014 as it read at the relevant time. To the extent IRCC seeks to attach new and prejudicial consequences (surrender, review and potential cancellation) to completed applications and to citizenship already recognized, the same principles that animate the presumption against the retrospective application of the law apply with full force.

The presumption protects acquired rights and prevents a change in the law from imposing new prejudicial consequences on completed transactions: Tran v. Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), 2017 SCC 50, at paras 43–45. In Tran, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that this presumption can apply to new or amended immigration measures, because the retrospective application of new schemes offends the principles of fairness and the rule of law that operate in the immigration context; and that where there is no indication the law-maker considered retrospectivity and its potential for unfair effects, the presumption is that retrospective application was not intended (paras 41, 43–52).

The presumption against retrospective operation “prevents injustice from arising” where a new or amended rule would overturn settled expectations: British Columbia v. Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., 2005 SCC 49, at para 71. As the Supreme Court explained in Canada (Attorney General) v. Hislop, 2007 SCC 10, at para 127, citing E.A. Driedger:

a retrospective statute operates forwards but looks backward in that it attaches new consequences for the future to an event that took place before the statute was enacted…a retrospective statute changes the law from what it otherwise would be with respect to a prior event.

The starting point is always the instrument itself: R v. Archambault, 2024 SCC 35, at para 24. Absent express transitional language directing that a new requirement apply to matters already in process (contrast Medovarski v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2005 SCC 51, at paras 1–6), the presumption is that the change does not disturb vested rights — the tangible, concrete rights vested in specific individuals: Archambault, at paras 28, 38–39, 44–45. A certificate of citizenship, once granted, recognizes a vested status. An IRCC checklist that guides an applicant on a specific application that has already been submitted or decided, cannot be altered to prejudice the applicant after an Acknowledgment of Receipt and file number has been issued. There is no published transitional measure announcing that a source-authority documentary standard would be applied to applications filed, or certificates issued, before that standard was articulated. The presumption is therefore not rebutted, and applying the new standard retrospectively to disturb citizenship applications that are currently in process or have already been recognized would be reviewable error.

If IRCC intends to demand documents from a specific civil source agency, or in a specific format (such as certified copies), you are free to amend CIT0014 by publishing a new edition and applying the changes to applications submitted after the new Checklist has been published.

Any cancellation decision must also be reasonable

Any decision to cancel a certificate under subsection 26(3) of the Citizenship Regulations must be reasonable, and justified, transparent and intelligible in light of the facts and the law: Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65. A cancellation premised on a documentary standard absent from the published guidance, and contradicted by the checklist’s own illustrative provisions, fails to meet that standard.

Where records pre-date civil registration, the demand cannot be met

For ancestors who pre-date the commencement of civil registration in the relevant jurisdiction, no “source authority” birth record ever existed and none can be produced. A requirement to explain efforts to obtain a record that never existed cannot reasonably attach, and applications properly rely on the contemporaneous civil and religious records that do exist.

The prejudice is grave and disproportionate

Surrender, and the prospect of cancellation, gravely prejudice individuals who have organized their affairs in reliance on validly issued certificates — including passports, Social Insurance Numbers, employment, and residence and mobility decisions. That prejudice is wholly disproportionate to a concern about documentary form that the published guidance never raised. The same applies to applicants currently in process, who relied on the current CIT 0014 checklist and invested time, energy, and money to build their citizenship by descent applications.

Notice and request for written confirmation

Accordingly, we put IRCC on notice that we consider any demand that civil documents be obtained from a particular “source authority,” beyond what CIT 0014 states, to be an unlawful and retrospective change to the published documentary requirements, and a breach of the duty of procedural fairness that will be challenged in Federal Court.

We ask that you advise the processing center in Nova Scotia to adhere to what is permitted in CIT0014 12-2025 and 01-2026.

We also remind IRCC that where a concern arises on an individual file, a procedural fairness letter must be sent out, with full details, and consistent with IRCC’s own procedural-fairness commitments.

Sincerely,

Andres Pelenur

Barrister & Solicitor

[email protected]