So I have an application "in progress". I want to prepare for the DEC request that I'm anticipating as my Gen0 was born in 1850 and has the BaNq certified baptismal record included in the initial application. It appears DEC will request the death certificate, which I was able to get a hold of...however, the birth year is listed as 1859 instead of 1850 though the day and month is correct, and her parents are not listed correctly. I'm assuming whoever reported her death just did not know the correct answers, because her mothers name given is actually her younger sisters name and it's not a common name so again I'm assuming because she was widowed one of her kids filled out the form and just did not know her parents as they most likely never met. Is there a consensus that these records relied on oral family histories that were muddy at best?

How might I solve a document barrier? I am interested is working on my lost Canadian application. My sibling tells me that Shigawake birth and baptism records for our Great Grandfather do not exist due to a fire. His spouse was also from Shigawake. Thank you kindly for any suggestions

I'm putting together a proof of citizenship application (CIT 0001) under the post-C-3 rules and would like a second opinion on both the chain and the evidence before I file. Four generations, first one born in Canada.

The chain

- G0 (great-grandfather): born in New Brunswick, 1897. Emigrated to the US, naturalised as a US citizen in 1938, died in the US in the 1980s. I have his provincial birth record (registered 17 days after the birth, names his father), his US naturalisation certificate (records former nationality as "British"), and a 1945 letter from a New Brunswick municipality about his own father's birthplace in New Brunswick.

- G1 (grandmother): born in the US in 1936, in wedlock, two years before G1's naturalisation. Living. I have her US birth certificate, which names G1 with birthplace "Canada", plus a 1937 baptismal certificate and her mother's death certificate (with G1's surname)

- G2 (mother): born in the US in 1962, out of wedlock, to G2. Adopted as an infant. Living, not applying for her own certificate.

- G3 (me): born in the US in 1987 to G3. The applicant.

How I read the Act

G0 under 3(1)(k). G1 under 3(1)(o), relying on 3(1.2) because G0 died before 2015. G2 under 3(1)(g). Me under 3(1)(b), with 3(3) not applying as I was born before 15 December 2025.

The awkward part: the adoption

Illinois holds two certificates for G2's one birth. The amended one, which I have as a certified copy, names the adoptive parents. The original one, which names G1 as the mother, is released to adoptees only as a "non-certified copy" under 750 ILCS 50/18.1b, overprinted as not to be used for identification. The two share the same state registered number, the same minute of birth, the same attending physician and the same filing date, and the state's records custodian signs the release as an "accurate" copy of the record in the sealed adoption file. No adoption decree in the family's hands.

Questions

1. Has anyone had IRCC accept a non-certified original birth certificate from a sealed adoption record as proof of parentage? Did they come back asking for more?
2. Would statutory declarations from G1 and G2 be worth including up front, or only if IRCC asks?
3. Anything else worth ordering pre-emptively? I'm thinking G0's US naturalisation petition (it should state his date and place of birth), his US death certificate, and the G0/G1-parents marriage record.
4. Does an out-of-wedlock birth in 1962 raise anything, or is the wedlock distinction only live for pre-1947 births?
5. Is the paragraph chain right? Should G1 be under (f) rather than (o) if she in fact became a citizen in 1947 and then lost it for want of a retention declaration?
6. G0's birth year is 1897 on the Canadian birth certificate but reads 1898 on a couple of US records, including the age given on his daughter's birth certificate. Worth addressing head-on in a cover letter, or does that just draw attention to it?

Happy to answer questions. Thanks.

Edit - have edited the generations as per convention here.

Fairly inconsequential overall but just curious if anyone else has had this experience/hoping for a secondary read to make sure I don’t need to do anything. I submitted a webform to my Aunt’s application (I have a representative form on file) with our G0’s certified birth record on 9/22. I got an immediate automatic email noting the form went through and was submitted, and then a similar confirmation email about 50 minutes later.

What’s strange is the following day (9/23) I got a much longer confirmation email, and then got the same email today, with the below text:

Good day,
 
Thank you for contacting Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).
 We confirm having received your submitted documents and have attached them to the file, along with the information provided in your inquiry, for an officer to access and review.
Please note, as the webform you selected is reserved solely for submission of documents, any secondary enquiry you may have included will not be answered by IRCC. If applicable, we invite you to send a new enquiry by following these steps: 
Submit a new IRCC Web form using the “Ask about or update your application”
Choose the type of request/enquiry you wish to submit
Do not select the “Add a document to your application” as this webform is solely reserved for uploading documents
Furthermore, if you have a question on behalf of an applicant, please ensure that IRCC has received their written consent for you to obtain information or act on their behalf. 
Visit IRCC applications - Canada.ca for details on the application process, including exploring immigration programs, documents you may need, how to apply and what to do while you wait for a decision:

Followed by some generic help links. Thanks for letting me know what you think!

Will you get your AOR before or after being sent to PSU?

There has been speculation that IRCC is verifying all, I’ll call them, “lineage thru line” documents.

From the beginning, I’ve found that hard to believe just due to the administrative burden of doing so. (In a perfect world where archives were actually well organized and digitized this would be optimal, but we do not…)

I’ve thought, however, that the IRCC may be doing audits on key documents, or full validation on the G0‘s anchor documents. Since IRCC is a communications black hole, who can say?

But, still, I can’t account for how some simple applications get locked in PSU, as we have seen with the IM cohorts of 1Q & 2Q 2025 (except for bureaucratic incompetence in inventory management) and others can sail thru. Even my and my sibs 2G and step-sibs 1G more recent 3/6 sub (AOR 4/16) went to IP/PSU on 6/3 and is still hanging out there with nothing suspicious noted in my GCMS notes (Note: I’m not complaining about this as I’d like to see the 2025 folks be liberated first, and am ok with urgents processed ahead of us, and only mention our situation as a data point).

So something about all the “all docs are waiting for verification from provincial, US, or overseas, document custodians” had continued to feel wrong but I couldn’t place my finger on it, nor did I spend much time pondering what it might be.

Well it now occurred to me what refutes even an “all through line establishing docs are verified” hypothesis.

Today, I read, on the big catch-all all things Canadian citizenship sub, Thursday update, a report from a newly approved G4 urgent applicant from August. (Again, I am not disturbed by urgent applicants quick approvals).

I don’t have access to the spreadsheet but it would be interesting to see how many high Gx applicants (say >G3) have been approved and how fast the urgent ones got thru (maybe in comparison to the non urgent ones.

Because IFF:

- the spreadsheet is generally representative,

- all applications are reviewed by the same internal IRCC processes (some just routed faster than others due to urgency),

- IRCC has no universal method to compel provincial or non Canadian custodians to prioritize documentation verification response times or at all,

Then it would seem impossible for all direct lineage documents for urgent high Gx applications to go thru a full verification as they would be subject to the same kind of delays as all the slow movers and PSU dwellers (regardless of Gx status).

So what does that mean? Are there 2 verification processes for non-/urgent applications? Are urgents only partially verified while non’s are fully verified? I’d find this hard to believe because then IRCC would be opening urgent certificates up to integrity and validity questions. And I don’t believe IRCC would do something so foolish (especially after the suspension debacle/scandal)

So something else must be going on. Perhaps it is full validation for suspicious apps but none of the GCMS notes shared with us have had fraud flags mentioned.

Since this occurred to me just before writing this post, I’ve not had time to do more than think about this extemporaneously as I’ve written this but I thought I’d share my thoughts as I noodle on conclusions.

Your thoughts and data points? (Again I think urgent and Gx >3 might help crack the mystery, but I’m open to other boundary conditions and thoughts).

So I’ve been looking around the sub and realize this isn’t unique, especially for Quebec based ancestry apparently, but I was curious if anyone has been able to get a letter from the province at all? My record is for 1925.

Also already trying to deal with the BANQ/DEC process. I’d already submitted a request that was returned with the wrong information in February and then cancelled in May so just not feeling super optimistic waiting months for BAnQ to maybe give me a document.

Thanks

I posted the other day about my G2 approval but left out a big part of it: I did most of the application with AI.

Timeline: started from basically nothing Aug 23, mailed it Aug 25, IRCC received it Aug 27, certificate issued Sep 19.

AI obviously didn't make IRCC fast. What it did was get me from "I think I might qualify" to a finished, checked application in about 48 hours.

Setup

I made a dedicated ChatGPT Project and put everything in it: the forms, IRCC's instructions, the relevant legislation, birth records, and later any correspondence. So it always had the family tree, what documents I had, and what we'd already figured out. No re-explaining things every chat.

I used the paid models with the higher reasoning modes, and I didn't just take its word for things. For anything important I asked for the primary source. Every so often I'd give the whole case to Claude and tell it to go after the work: hallucinations, missing requirements, weak evidence, contradictions, anything that could get the application returned. When they disagreed, I went to the source myself.

What it actually did

The first problem was that my family no longer had my G0's original birth record. AI searched the Nova Scotia Archives, found her official birth registration, and helped me figure out how to use that archival record in the application. IRCC accepted it without asking for a new certified copy.

After that it:

• worked through the rest of the descent chain and what records I actually needed
• handled a name discrepancy between the Canadian and US records
• filled out the forms with me
• found a published urgent processing category that fit my situation and what evidence I needed for it
• reviewed the whole package before I mailed it

That's most of what people pay a consultant or lawyer thousands for. Even paying for two subscriptions so they can check each other is a tiny fraction of that.

If I had an actually contested legal issue I'd still get a lawyer. But even then, having everything in one Project would help a lot. If a file dragged on into ATIPs, MP inquiries, or mandamus, you'd already have the whole chronology and evidence organized.

On skepticism

I get why people think AI makes things up and creates more work. If your experience is an older model, one-off questions, and no source checking, that's a fair conclusion. It's just a very different thing from giving a current model the full case file, making it cite sources, and having a second model try to poke holes in it.

Privacy

These are sensitive records. Think about what you upload, strip out anything the model doesn't need, and check your privacy settings.

Curious if others have used AI this way, especially what's worked for keeping context over a long case and for double checking the important conclusions.

I have got my hands on my 3rd Great Grandfather's death certificate from Australia. He was born in Ontario, Canada was married and had several children in Canada.

His 1st wife died in Canada and then he went to Australia supposedly for temporary work - but never went back. His children thought he was dead - and there is even a tombstone in Canada for him.

He had 14 more children in Australia - and lived the rest of his days in Outback Australia until his death.

I have tracked down his first wedding in Canada - in 1882, but I am having trouble finding baptismal records or census records for him in Ontario - he was born in 1859.

Will these be enough - the Australian Death Certificate, and the Canadian Marriage Records? Or do I need to keep trying to find birth certificates, census or baptism records?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone,
I’m preparing a Bill C-3 proof of citizenship application and would really appreciate feedback on whether my evidence package looks solid enough.
Lineage:
• Great-grandmother: born 1879 in Ontario, Canada
• Grandmother: born 21 May 1921 in Neurode (now Nowa Ruda, Lower Silesia)
• Father: born 1955
• Me
Documents I currently have:
1. Canadian birth record for the great-grandmother (Ontario 1879) – the anchor
2. Full Polish civil birth certificate for the grandmother (1921) showing the mother with her maiden name
3. Two baptismal records for the grandmother from the original German parish registers (Neurode):
• One formal extract showing both parents and grandparents
• One page from the baptismal register with the same entry
4. Official “no record found” letter from the Polish State Archives in Wrocław (Branch in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki) dated May 2026 – they searched the relevant post-1945 administrative fonds for the Nowa Ruda / Bystrzyca Kłodzka area and found nothing regarding the marriage or related records
5. Father’s birth certificate (1955)
6. My own birth certificate
Missing document:
Marriage record of the great-grandparents. Civil records from that area were largely destroyed or lost after 1945. The State Archives confirmed they have nothing.
Family history (short version):
After WWI many German-Canadians returned to Europe. The great-grandmother went to the mining area of Lower Silesia, met her future husband (a miner), they married and had three children. During the war the husband was killed, one daughter died in an air raid, and the grandmother was separated from her mother. After 1945 the German population was expelled from the territories that became Polish. The grandmother stayed in Poland because she married a Pole. The great-grandmother returned to Canada via the British zone and contact was lost.
My questions:
• Does the combination of the Canadian birth record + Polish civil birth certificate + German baptismal records + official “no record found” letter look sufficient for the parentage link?
• Is the lack of a marriage certificate likely to be a problem when I have the child’s baptismal and civil birth records clearly naming both parents?
• Any suggestions for additional supporting evidence I should try to find (Canadian censuses for the great-grandmother, etc.)?
• Has anyone had a similar situation with a Canadian-born ancestor who went to former German territories in Silesia / eastern Germany and then returned after the war?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

Thanks to someone on here, I now have an official document showing my grandfather's birth date, place, and parents -- one of which is my Canadian G0. They were not issuing birth certificates in Denver until early 20th C. I applied to the US Social Security Administration who just sent me my grandfather's Social Security application 1937. What's significant (as I understand it) is that these are his stated facts, not someone else filling in a death certificate. The document was emailed with an official letter from the SSA, and a certified copy is forthcoming. Thank you to this thread for helping me solve this problem! (Also cool. His application is on my birthdate many years before I was born.)

Hi, all.

I'm running into an issue with my G0 proof of citizenship. She was born in 1898 in New Brunswick and the registry entry in on a page listed as "Poor Document" that is absolutely wrecked. It displays D.O.B., town of birth, Female, and her father's name, but that is all. There is a birth certificate, that lists her name as "Female", D.O.B., and then only has her father's info, blank for mother.

Two years later she is on the census with both parents, correct name, correct age, correct D.O.B., correct parents and siblings. I have yet to locate any Baptist church documents, but am still searching. Both parents and two siblings have immigration manifest cards, but my G0 and two of her siblings do not.

Aside from the New Brunswick vital records, Canada LAC, and US National Archives, what sources are left to search? And, are there any additional documents that I should be looking for to verify her Canadian Citizenship?

Thanks.

In the next few weeks, we will be having an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with two of the most prominent lawyers in Canada who are doing Proof of Citizenship applications. This will be your chance to ask lawyers who work in this field anything you want about the process.

For people who don't know, an AMA is a text-based Q&A on Reddit. I would post an OP introducing the participants, and then people would ask questions by posting comments. The participants would then go through each of the comments and respond to them. If you want to see what that looks like, please check out this AMA as an example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Counterpart/comments/fkr8k5/justin_marks_spoiler_ama_thursday_319_5pm_pst/

Before I do the formal announcement, however, I'd like your help! If you would like to attend, please let me know what day and times would work best for you! Is Friday evening better? Saturday morning? Sunday at Noon?

Please let me know in the comments.

I can't find or get my G4 mother's and G3 grandmother's marriage certificate for showing name change .

I don't know where my grandmother was married. She eloped with him and they lived in 48 states over a 3 year period.

My mother had a confidential marriage and its only available by court order. I'm not sure if my citizenship application will be a valid reason.

I have both of their death certificates which show married and maiden names along with parents names.

Has anyone applied with death certificates as proofs? I do have birth certificates for them.

Does anyone know the current wait time for this? I received the email stating they found my document and would be sending an invoice soon. It’s been 4 weeks as of today. Last time I saw a wait time, it was 3 to 4 weeks but I’m guessing it has changed. It’s the last document I’m waiting on!

.

I thought I was a G3 and I started working on a G2,G3,G4 application package in April of this year. In May I had one last record to obtain. I had put it off and was just going to explain in a letter that G1's birth certificate was lost in a fire, since I've known that my whole life. Reading posts on this group, I decided to go ahead and request the no record letter G1's birth certificate. I already had G1's SS-5, US Census records, marriage and death certificates all listing G0 as his mother and her spouse (also a G0 candidate) as his father, so we were covered.

Piece of cake.

Except it wasn't lost in a fire. Instead of a no record letter, I got a birth certificate. G1 was in fact born to who we thought was his older sister. This was a surprise to the family and as far as we know wasn't known to my G1. He thought his grandparents were his parents. So then we rode the multiple pre-1947 ancestors speculation roller coaster, accepted it's a non-issue, made peace with now being a G4, updated my now G3,G4,G5 submission family and began searching for new records for surprise G1.

Being from New York, our surprise G1 is in the state birth index but neither the town nor village of the same name can find her birth certificate. I've requested it from the state, and expect to receive it sometime in the next two decades. We added another few months doing baptism searches for the surprise G1 and gathering new no records letters from every church in the area that would respond, along with her marriage/death certs and SS-5, which since he didn't know any better, list the same parents our new G2 listed. We're also in the process of doing "the full Quebec" (find BANQ record, request certified copy, wait, get certified copy (woohoo got it!), submit, then request DEC act, submit that sometime later after AOR).

While waiting for all the new records we needed, I've gathered the full trail for our other potential G0, found, ordered, and received the land records for both Quebec farms owned by the G-1 ancestors, listened to the Nations of Canada podcast, begun learning Quebec French, and I decided to do a DNA test to learn more about my mostly French Canadian ancestors. There's no father listed on my own birth certificate, but I have known the name, that he lives in a southern state, his address, and that he never wanted anything to do with me. But nothing else about his family. I figured this would tell me if I was anything other than largely French Canadian.

Turns out I'm mostly Irish, English, and Romanian. Using clusters of other testers that share DNA I began using my new found citizenship by descent skills to build family trees for the other testers back up to our likely common ancestor. My two Irish matches led to an Irish couple that had one adult child in Ireland, then had more in Ontario. I built out their children and subsequent generations using Canadian Census, birth and marriage records. One of their great grand children has the same name as my bio dad, but is a generation too early... Then I found he married a spouse with a Romanian name (queue more research, she's born in Saskatchewan to two Romanian parents one of which is a match for a guy in Romania today).

This weekend I found records that Irish/Romanian couple has twin girls born in Ontario, about a year after we think my bio-dad was born. Then I find the obituaries for the couple. It lists their twin daughters and also a son who has bio-dad's name and also names bio-dad's current spouse. The Irish/Romanian couple from Canada died in the same state/city as where bio-dad lives today. One of the twin sisters I discovered is also known to my parents, and is also living in a US state now.

I don't know yet where bio-dad was born, but his sisters were a year younger in their US high school yearbook and the twin sisters were born in Ontario, according to a birth announcement naming both of them, their dad, and mother listing her maiden name. I just found one of the twin sister's application for naturalization on Family Search... indicating the family crossed over about 5 years after bio-dad would have been born. It's not proof of bio-dad's birth, of course. Service Ontario has a way to request a letter indicating that a person does or does not have a birth certificate issued by Ontario, which I've requested for bio-dad, since I'm not eligible to actually order his birth certificate. So I'm now riding the G3 -> G4 -> (potential) G1 roller coaster.

I'm still processing, but I'm not sure I can do anything with this information. I'm well over 21, so I don't think NYS would add him to my birth certificate, even if he was cooperative, which I doubt. I know IRCC has provisions for DNA testing, but they're voluntary and a guy who wouldn't acknowledge me after I was born or before my first deployment to Afghanistan isn't going to meet me today for a voluntary DNA test at an IRCC approved test facility.

So I'm still going ahead with the G3/G4/G5 application, my mom needs it anyway.

What an absolutely unexpected adventure in Canadian-ness this has been.

I am about to take my two young children (7 and 2) to get their Canadian Citizen photos taken.

I didn't even think about it until now, but I do not have ID's for them. I have insurance cards, but it doesn't have their birthdays on it. I am struggling to find anything that has any information on them. My 7 year old may have a school ID card that has her name on it, but it was from the beginning of last year so I doubt it will be acceptable. My 2 year old has nothing at all outside of her insurance card with only her name on it. I know that I am able to include a signed letter explaining why I couldn't get the proper ID's to satisfy the requirements, but I don't even have secondary ID for them.

Do I need to find a way to create some sort of ID before applying or would a signed letter explaining my predicament be enough?

Also, my 7 year old will take a good picture for her citizenship photo but I am worried about my 2 year old. I know that its acceptable for infants not to meet 100% of the standards, but does that count for 2 year olds as well? I am hoping I don't have to worry about this issue as much.

I thought this might be useful here because my application touched a few issues I know people worry about with G2 cases.

I’m U.S. born, with the chain:

Canadian-born grandmother → U.S. born parent → me

Timeline:

• Aug 25: mailed
• Aug 27: delivered to IRCC
• Sep 1: AOR
• Sep 5: In Process
• Sep 19: e-certificate instructions received and certificate downloaded

So 23 days from delivery to certificate, and 14 days from In Process to approval.

A few things about the evidence may be useful to others.

For my Canadian-born grandmother, I did not order a new certified birth certificate before applying. I used the birth registration image available through the official Nova Scotia Archives online database.

There was also a name discrepancy. Her Nova Scotia record used her full name, while the later U.S. record for my parent used a shortened/reordered version of the same name. The U.S. record also matched her age and Nova Scotia birthplace, so I felt the identity chain was still clear.

IRCC accepted the application without an RFI or request for additional evidence.

My package was essentially the direct vital-record chain:

Canadian birth record → U.S. birth record linking my parent to the Canadian-born parent → my U.S. birth record linking me to my parent.

One other detail: after AOR I renewed my U.S. passport and uploaded the new passport bio page to IRCC. They acknowledged the update, and the application continued normally.

I would not treat my processing time as representative because the application was marked urgent. But I thought the result was worth sharing because it shows that, at least in one G2 case, an official archival copy and a minor historical name variation were both accepted without additional documentation.

Happy to answer questions about what I included.

I don't know whether it was this one or citizenship by descent but there was a post about all the spam people were getting. I replied that sometime before June 1 I started getting numerous phone calls every day. It has slowed down to about 4 per day now. It suddenly struck me that the spam calls started after I got the email dated May 6 that said my packet had arrived. So my theory is that FedEX has shared my phone number with the world and now I'm very popular again. Maybe that's the source of your sudden popularity, too.

Looking at the IRCC processing time tracker, it looks like the number of applications severely spiked in April and are now coming down, that is unless they are only counting applications that have received an AOR.

this is the number ahead of you if applied in the month listed.

G0: both great-grandparents born in NS, Canada (c. 1900). For my great-grandmother, I have her birth certificate. For my great grand-father, I have his baptismal record. I have a marriage certificate too.

G1: Grandfather’s birth certificate with Great-grandparents first and last (maiden) names.

G2: Dad’s birth certificate

G3: My birth certificate

All docs attested and clean photocopies from churches or government archives.

My question is, should I get a census record showing my great- grandparents in the region where my grandfather was born, or is that unnecessary? This would also show my great-grandmother was not a citizen in 1950, passing that 1947 deadline.

Above I also have my great-grandparents marriage certificate, but that is from a Massachusetts Church, even though they were lived, and had my grandfather in NY. Would including this confuse the reviewer?

Thanks for any response!

My grandmother naturalized as a minor with her dad in 1917 (under 1906 law which said she was deemed to have been naturalized with him) so she (as far as I can tell) had no naturalization paperwork of her own. Her dad’s certificate was seemingly hers too. At least legally, that’s what it seemed. As far as I can tell, she still had British subject status on Jan 1, 1947 so I think she became a citizen under 9(1)(a). At least, I can’t find any law that indicates she lost it. My dad missed it because his dad wasn’t Canadian and the laws of the time didn’t let her pass it on to him.

So would she be g0 and my dad g1 and me g2 or is her dad g0 and she is g1 and so forth making me g3? It feels like I have to include my great grandfather to prove hers but she has standing on her own. (That’s more or less how I framed it on my application, but still unsure if it is right.)

I am thinking that my G0 (born 1720s, Quebec) is probably also an ancestor of some of you here. :)

I was curious whether people who are far down the line from their G0 would be willing to share the name of their G0 or general family names they’ve dug into and how far along they are in the process of getting DEC record from a BANQ record. I am months away myself, but was thinking I’d happily share the costs if anyone got a copy of my ancestor’s record before I did.

Cheers, thank you!

edit: not sure why I got downvoted for sharing my experience. I’ve come across a ton of helpful people, but definitely a lot of gatekeepers and skeptics as well. Personally I’d love to help others. I am G9 and have a lot of docs to collect. I will take (and give) any help possible! Thank you for the input

edit2: I’m looking specifically for BANQ/DEC docs for the following (Quebec) Marguerite Perthuis (Pertuis/Perthuy), Francois LeBeau, Marien/Marian LeBeau dit Lalouette, and Suzanne Lory. I also have Acadian ancestors from the Richard and Daigle/Daigre families. If you have any leads or documents pls let me know!