Build Canada LogoBuilder MP
← Back to bills

Canada Updates Citizenship Rules for Fairer Access

An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025)

Summary

  • Updates the Citizenship Act to clarify and expand who acquires or can be granted Canadian citizenship when born outside Canada, including children born posthumously and adoptees.
  • Streamlines and replaces several subsections governing citizenship-by-descent, grants, and exceptions, and adds regulation-making powers to manage people who become citizens upon the Act coming into force.
  • Establishes or clarifies grant pathways for grandchildren of Canadians serving abroad and aligns adoption provisions with citizenship-by-grant under section 5.1.
  • Aims to resolve "lost Canadians" gaps and provide clearer, more predictable rules for Canadians and their children born abroad.

Builder Assessment

Vote Yes

Overall, the bill aligns modestly with Build Canada's tenets by reducing bureaucratic barriers in citizenship processes and improving service clarity, with no evident conflicts. While primarily administrative, it can support talent mobility and reduce red tape, which are consistent with a pro-growth, pro-freedom orientation.

  • Improves clarity and predictability for citizenship-by-descent and adoption (reduces bureaucratic inertia).
  • Supports global mobility for Canadians serving or working abroad (helps talent retention and potential competitiveness).
  • Streamlines provisions and empowers targeted regulations for transition (potential service efficiency gains).
  • To strengthen alignment: add performance targets for processing times; explicitly recognize substantial-connection criteria that incentivize residence/work in Canada; integrate digital-by-default service delivery; couple with pathways that encourage high-skill return migration.

Question Period Cards

No question period cards yet.

Principles Analysis

—

Canada should aim to be the world's most prosperous country.

Economic impacts are indirect; changes to citizenship rules may modestly expand the talent pool over time but do not directly target national wealth.

✓

Promote economic freedom, ambition, and breaking from bureaucratic inertia (reduce red tape).

Simplifying and clarifying citizenship for Canadians and their children abroad reduces red tape and removes barriers created by past anomalies (e.g., lost Canadians).

—

Drive national productivity and global competitiveness.

By supporting global mobility for Canadian families and those serving abroad, it could aid talent retention, but the effect on productivity is indirect and uncertain.

—

Grow exports of Canadian products and resources.

Diaspora ties can help exports, yet the bill does not contain trade or export measures; any export gains are speculative.

—

Encourage investment, innovation, and resource development.

No direct provisions on investment or innovation policy; potential benefits via a larger, more mobile citizen base are indirect.

✓

Deliver better public services at lower cost (government efficiency).

Consolidating and clarifying pathways (and removing/replacing subsections) can streamline processing and reduce administrative friction, though implementation details matter.

—

Reform taxes to incentivize work, risk-taking, and innovation.

No tax measures are included.

—

Focus on large-scale prosperity, not incrementalism.

The bill is primarily a legal/administrative fix; any macroeconomic effects are incremental rather than transformative.

Did we get the builder vote wrong?

Email hi@buildcanada.com

C-3

PartyLiberal
StatusAt second reading in the House of Commons
Last updatedJun 5, 2025
TopicsImmigration
Parliament45