A legal change around who gets to apply for Canadian citizenship has led to a spike in applications from those south of the border, according to an immigration lawyer.

In December 2025, Bill C-3, known as An Act to Amend the Citizenship Act, passed in Ottawa. The law retroactively grants people born outside of Canada to a Canadian parent or who are adopted by a Canadian parent, eligibility to apply for proof of citizenship. Prior to the change in the law, only first-generation Canadians were allowed to apply.

Cassandra Fultz, an Ottawa-based immigration lawyer, told CTV Your Morning this week that anyone who is the direct descendant of someone who was born in Canada or adopted by someone who is Canadian, will be able to apply for proof of Canadian citizenship without any limit, up to and including anyone who was born December 15th, 2025, when the bill passed.

“There is a line there,” Fultz explained. “But anyone who is already born up to that date, there truly is no limit.”

Citizenship isn’t automatic

Those who meet the requirements don’t automatically inherit a Canadian citizenship, Fultz said, as there is a process that must be followed for that to be granted.

“However, that door to claim citizenship is now wide open,” she said. “And if you are eligible, you can walk through it.”

The legal shift might seem to contradict Canada’s recent cap on immigration. Last year, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said it would “pause population growth in the short term.”

But in 2023, the Ontario Superior Court determined that the first generation limit on passing down Canadian citizenship was unconstitutional, and the government had no choice but to change the law.

Flutz said that since the bill passed, demand for proof of Canadian citizenship “has exploded.”

In 2025, interim measures were in place so people could make an application before the law was even passed.

“We (have) already started seeing a huge demand for this type of work, all the way back to this time last year,” she said.

Applications coming from all over the U.S.

Fultz said that applications are coming from all over the United States. There are those in the northeast who are descendants of people who left the province of Quebec between 1830 to 1940.

There are also people in the southern part of the U.S., who are descendants of the Acadians, who, in the 1760s, were deported from Acadie, which is now Maritime Canada, Fultz added.

However, she stressed that there are also lots of applications from western states like California, Washington and Oregon.

“There’s no geographic limit,” Fultz said. “This interest, it truly transcends geographic lines, it transcends generational lines.”