Three months after Bill C-3 reopened Canadian citizenship to every generation born abroad, the first real numbers are in — and they confirm what immigration lawyers have been saying since December: this is mostly an American story, and IRCC is already buried.
According to figures released by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and reported by CBC News, 4,075 people have had their Canadian citizenship by descent confirmed under Bill C-3 between December 15, 2025 and March 31, 2026. Of those, 1,955 were born in the United States — almost exactly half. Mexico came second with 900 successful applicants. The United Kingdom came third with 140.
The application backlog has grown almost as fast as the approvals. In just one month, the pile of pending proof-of-citizenship files climbed from roughly 56,000 to 70,400 — a 25% jump. IRCC's published processing time estimate is now 11 to 15 months, depending on the complexity of the historical documents involved.
If you're sitting on a Bill C-3 application — or thinking about filing one — here's what the new numbers mean for your timeline.
What the data shows
4,075 confirmed citizens in 107 days works out to roughly 38 confirmations per day, processing 7 days a week. That's a respectable pace for a brand-new program working through paper-heavy historical evidence — but it's nowhere near the inflow rate.
70,400 applications waiting at that processing speed means a static-backlog clearance horizon of more than 5 years if no new files arrive. New files are arriving every day, so the real wait for anyone applying today is the published 11-to-15-month figure — and that estimate already assumes IRCC scales up its citizenship-by-descent processing capacity, which it has signalled but not yet quantified.
The country breakdown matches lawyer chatter from January. Most of the early-wave Americans applying weren't planning to move to Canada — they wanted the passport for travel optionality and family heritage. Mexico's number is the bigger surprise: 900 confirmations is consistent with the long-running Mexican-Canadian dual nationality community that fell outside the old first-generation rule. The UK's 140 is a small number that reflects how few British-born descendants of Canadian post-WWII emigrants are still in the pipeline.
The 11-to-15-month wait is a current-application estimate, not a guarantee. IRCC's processing-time figures reflect the time it took the most recently completed files to be decided — and the most recently completed files are the simplest ones (clean lineage, single-generation, no name changes, no Quebec records). If your application has complications, plan for the upper end of that range or beyond.
How this compares to before C-3
Pre-Bill-C-3 citizenship-by-descent applications — the old first-generation-only files — were processed in roughly 4 to 8 months. The new 11-to-15-month estimate is a near doubling of the wait time, and it reflects two things: a sudden surge in volume, and a sharp increase in average file complexity. Multi-generational lineage files require IRCC officers to evaluate more documents, often across more jurisdictions, often including records that are 50 to 100 years old.
If you're comparing your wait against pre-C-3 norms or against what IRCC quoted at launch in December, those numbers no longer apply. The new normal is more than a year.
Where the volume is coming from
Vital-statistics offices across Canada have been the canary in the coal mine for months. As we reported in our Bill C-3 explainer, provincial offices saw record requests jump from 32 in January 2025 to more than 1,000 in January 2026 — a 3,000% increase, driven almost entirely by Americans pulling birth, marriage, and death certificates for their grandparents and great-grandparents.
What's new in May 2026 is that the surge is now visible in IRCC's processing queue too — not just in the document-gathering phase. The 70,400-application backlog is the downstream consequence of the document-gathering surge that started in mid-December.
If you haven't started gathering documents yet, the queue will be longer by the time you do. If you're already gathering documents, the queue when you file in (say) August 2026 will be larger than it is today. Filing later is more expensive in time, not less.
What this means for your application
If you're already in the queue: the 11-to-15-month figure is your best current estimate. IRCC's official guidance is that processing times are recalculated based on recently completed files — so if the agency adds staff or simplifies its workflow, the published wait can drop without a formal announcement. Watch IRCC's processing times page monthly. Do not call to ask for an update before you cross the published wait threshold; IRCC's call centre cannot expedite citizenship-by-descent files.
If you're about to file: assemble every document IRCC asks for before you submit, not after. The single biggest source of additional delay in citizenship-by-descent files is IRCC requesting a missing document mid-process — every request adds 2 to 4 months. Pay particular attention to:
- Long-form (not short-form) birth certificates for every generation in the chain
- Marriage and divorce certificates for any name change in the chain
- Naturalization documents for anyone in the chain who became Canadian through naturalization rather than birth
- Certified translations for any French-language documents (and for any non-English / non-French documents in your ancestor's records)
If you're researching whether you qualify and haven't started gathering documents: start with your closest Canadian ancestor and work outward. The provinces with the slowest vital-statistics turnaround — Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia, in roughly that order — are also the provinces where most pre-1950 Canadian birth records live. If your ancestor was born in any of those three, request the long-form certificate today; you'll need it whether or not you ultimately file.
If your file is complex — multiple adoptions, name changes, lost records, ancestors who lived in multiple provinces, ancestors whose status under Canada's historical citizenship laws is unclear (pre-1947 births especially) — talk to an immigration lawyer or paid representative before you file. The agency's published 11-to-15-month estimate assumes a clean file. Complex files routinely take 18 to 24 months even when everything is submitted correctly the first time.
Pre-1947 births are a hidden trap. Canada did not have a formal citizenship law until January 1, 1947 — before that, Canadians were technically British subjects under Imperial law. If your Canadian ancestor was born or naturalized before 1947, IRCC has to evaluate their status under the pre-Citizenship Act framework, and that work falls outside the normal processing flow. Files with a pre-1947 ancestor reliably take 18+ months. If that describes your chain, file now rather than wait, and consider engaging a citizenship lawyer who has handled pre-1947 cases before.
What we expect next
The 70,400 number will keep climbing. IRCC's own forecast at the time Bill C-3 was passed predicted "tens of thousands" of new files over time — the May 2026 figure suggests the agency is already at the upper end of its initial projection, and the inflow is not slowing.
Expect two responses from IRCC over the next 12 months:
- A processing-time recalibration. If volume keeps climbing, the published 11-to-15-month estimate will move up before it moves down. Plan for 15 to 18 months by year-end if the inflow trend holds.
- Investment in dedicated citizenship-by-descent staff. The 2025-26 IRCC Departmental Plan flagged citizenship as a service area requiring "operational adjustment" — that's bureaucratic shorthand for "more staff and updated systems." A formal announcement is plausible in the fall 2026 supplementary estimates.
Neither change reduces the value of filing now. The earlier you're in the queue, the sooner you reach the front.
How to get started
If you haven't applied yet:
- Read our full Canadian Citizenship by Descent guide — it walks through who qualifies and what documents you'll need.
- Visit IRCC's proof of citizenship page for the official application form (CIT 0001) and current fees.
- Order the long-form birth, marriage, and death certificates for everyone in your direct chain. This takes 2 to 8 weeks per certificate depending on the issuing jurisdiction.
- File the proof-of-citizenship application as soon as your documents are in hand. Every week you wait adds to the queue ahead of you.
The passport stage takes 30 business days after IRCC issues your proof of citizenship, and that timeline is unchanged — the bottleneck is the proof-of-citizenship stage, not the passport itself.
Related reading
- Canadian Citizenship by Descent: How Americans Are Claiming Canadian Passports in 2026 — the full eligibility and document guide
- Canadian Citizenship Guide — for people pursuing citizenship through residency rather than descent
- IRCC Processing Times May 2026 — what the rest of IRCC's queue looks like right now