Confusion spreads as Ottawa defends orders to surrender citizenship certificates

The immigration department says it’s working “as quickly as possible” to resolve citizenship-by-descent claims, as some claimants say they did everything Ottawa asked them to do.

An unknown number of people who received citizenship certificates under the new citizenship-by-descent law received letters from the federal government over the weekend demanding that they surrender them.

Read more:

• IRCC pauses processing some citizenship by descent cases as department probes issues
• Minister says ‘lost Canadians’ must prove link to Canada in each generation
• Ottawa directs some with ‘Lost Canadian’ citizenship to surrender documents

Immigration Minister Lena Diab said Wednesday that citizenship-by-descent claimants must prove Canadian lineage generation-by-generation with “verified, authenticated” documents.

Health psychologist Bridget Burnett had already sold her Colorado home ahead of a move to Victoria next week when she was told to surrender her proof of citizenship last weekend.

Burnett’s great-grandfather was born in New Brunswick and she included certified 1861 census records from Library and Archives Canada among the evidence she submitted to support her claim.

She says she has a letter from the New Brunswick archives saying it does not have a birth certificate for her great-grandfather, but the law allows for alternative evidence as long as the claimant submits evidence of efforts to obtain a document.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 18, 2026.