What to Know About Canada’s New Citizenship Eligibility Requirements and How to Apply

Six months after Canada expanded its citizenship eligibility, requests are flooding in for archival records. The documents are vital for proving ties to the country.

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Bound historical parish registers at the Anglican Diocese in Toronto, Ontario. Credit... Cole Burston for The New York Times

June 18, 2026, 5:00 a.m. ET

Six months after Canada expanded its citizenship eligibility to people with ancestral ties to the country, genealogists, archivists and government vital records offices have mobilized to respond to the flood of new requests for historical information.

A legal decision last December found it unconstitutional to restrict citizenship rights beyond the first generation. People who can prove a direct Canadian-born ancestor — a grandparent, great-grandparent or someone even further back — can claim citizenship.

Applicants are now crowdsourcing their knowledge and sharing experiences to help others navigate the process. Americans make up 48 percent of those applying for Canadian citizenship.

For some people, citizenship opens up possibilities to reconnect to their family roots, provide a safe haven from the political instability in the United States or to access Canada’s social programs, like health care and a subsidized university education.

Just months into President Trump’s second term, Doug and Laurie Junkins were ready to leave the United States for good. They worried about their daughter, who is transgender, amid sweeping policies and funding cuts targeted at the group by the administration.

Canada was a natural choice for relocation, an easy drive north of their home in Seattle. After an hourlong meeting with a Canadian immigration lawyer, the couple, in their late 50s, became dispirited about their prospects.

“Right at the end of the conversation, Doug said, ‘Oh, too bad my Canadian grandfather can’t help us,’ and it was like a record scratch,” said Ms. Junkins, a personal trainer who also has Canadian ancestry. The lawyer lit up, and gave the Junkins some good news: those Canadian connections offered a pathway in.

It was a huge relief for Ms. Junkins, speaking from the family’s new home in Victoria, British Columbia. “I don’t think we have ever been happier than we are now,” she said.

Here’s what to know about navigating the new rules for Canadian citizenship.

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Claire Wilton, the archivist at the diocese, right, and Sarah McDougall, the archives assistant, among the diocese’s stacks in Toronto. Credit... Cole Burston for The New York Times

First, unearth your family history

Genealogy websites were the first resources that Matt May, a career consultant for tech workers, tapped into to unravel his family’s migration from Quebec to Massachusetts, where he was born. He immediately found his great-grandmother’s baptism certificate through a free website, FamilySearch, run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He said he also found a great-grandmother going back 10 generations, Hélène Desportes, who may have been the first person of French descent born in Canada .

“That just blew me away,” said Mr. May. “It’s like winning the lottery,” he added.

To complete his application, Mr. May requested copies of the baptismal records through the National Library and Archives of Québec, which says it has been inundated with requests from Americans. Last month alone, it received 1,969 requests for archival records, compared with just 87 at the same time last year.

Churches were among Canada’s first keepers of vital records, a mostly invisible role, until now.

In the subterranean level of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, two full-time archivists devote hundreds of hours to call up sometimes barely legible documents dating back as far as 1800. They are stored in a climate-controlled vault containing registries from parishes all over southern Ontario.

“My expectation was that this is going to start to slow down, but it has not,” said Claire Wilton, the archivist at the diocese. She said she and other religious archives colleagues had received no communications from the government warning them about how they might be affected by the rules change.

Searches can be all-consuming, said Sarah McDougall, the archives assistant, whose desk is adorned with scraps of paper containing biographical details she’s hunting. The records are often out of order or illegible, and they may be missing the names of parents, especially for couples married in the 1800s.

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Theresa McVean, chair of the Canada Chapter Association of Professional Genealogists, at the Toronto Reference Library. Credit... Cole Burston for The New York Times

Get your records in order

While not finding a record can be dismaying, there are often explanations, as can be the case if someone moved to the United States in between census periods. Some people turn to a professional genealogist, who can draft reports explaining relevant circumstances, said Theresa McVean, chair of the Canada Chapter Association of Professi…