Why was Bill C-3 really passed? The long fight behind the law that made millions of Americans dual citizens

On December 15, 2025, Bill C-3 changed who counts as Canadian.

Since it took effect, Americans who had never thought much about their Canadian grandmother or great-grandfather became dual US-Canadian citizens overnight. Many have been searching for birth records since and then applying for Canadian citizenship certificates to fully avail of their rights as Canadian citizens.

Bill C-3 is an amendment to Canada’s Citizenship Act. It removed the first-generation limit, a rule that stopped Canadians born abroad from passing citizenship to their own children born abroad. It also added a 1,095-day substantial connection requirement for children born on or after December 15, 2025.

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What most people don’t know is how long it took to get there. The law was actually the end point of a 16-year argument, a court challenge, and a failed attempt at legislation.

Here is how it happened.

It started with the First-Generation Limit

In 2009, Canada introduced the first-generation limit. It meant a Canadian born outside Canada could not automatically pass citizenship to a child also born outside Canada.

The reason for the introduction of this limit was due to a war that broke out in 2006, which led Canada to evacuate thousands of its citizens from Beirut, many of whom had lived in Lebanon for years.

Commentators started using the phrase “Canadians of convenience.” The FGL was introduced by the then-Conservative government to stop families from passing Canadian status down indefinitely from abroad.

Then seven families went to court

In 2021, a group of people from seven families challenged the rule in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

Their argument was that the cut-off discriminated based on where a person was born, therefore restricting mobility and liberty rights. And it fell hardest on women, who sometimes gave birth outside Canada for reasons they did not control, including work, study, medical care or a partner’s job.

On December 19, 2023, Justice Jasmine Akbarali ruled the cut-off unconstitutional. She found it violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by treating citizens born in Canada differently from citizens who got their citizenship by descent, on their birth outside Canada.

The second group, she wrote, held “a lesser class of citizenship,” because they could not pass their status to children born abroad.

The court therefore struck down the provisions and gave Ottawa time to fix the law.

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Ottawa agreed, then ran out of time

In January 2024, the federal government confirmed it would not challenge the Ontario Supreme Court’s decision. Then immigration minister Marc Miller said the rule had produced unacceptable consequences for Canadian families whose children were born outside the country.

That left Parliament to write a replacement. In May 2024, the government introduced Bill C-71, which would have restored citizenship to people shut out by the limit.

While the bill moved slowly, IRCC opened other avenues to citizenship by descent. In June 2024 it created an urgent processing route for a narrow group of applicants. In March 2025 it announced broader interim measures granting citizenship case by case.

Meanwhile the court’s deadline kept moving. Ottawa asked for more time in June 2024, then again in August.

Then politics intervened. In January 2025, Justin Trudeau announced his resignation as Liberal leader and Parliament was prorogued.

Days later, the government confirmed it would miss the court’s deadline which was then in March.

Bill C-3 picked up where C-71 stopped

On June 5, 2025, the government proposed Bill C-3 instead. It covered much of the same ground as the old bill, with one addition: the substantial connection test, requiring a Canadian parent to have spent at least 1,095 days in Canada before the child’s birth for citizenship to pass to children born abroad going forward.

Parliament passed it on November 19, 2025, one day before the court’s final deadline. It took effect on December 15, 2025.

Why Bill C-3 is here to stay

Nothing about the passing of Bill C-3 was quick. The bill had to clear first reading, second reading, committee study, report stage and third reading in the House of Commons. Then it had to go through the same stages in the Senate before reaching the Governor General.

That is also the reason the effects of Bill C-3 cannot easily be “reversed,” according to an immigration lawyer.

Undoing it would take the same route. A future Parliament would have to introduce a new bill and pass it through both chambers again. That is not something that happens quickly or without notice.

Even then, a new law would not cancel citizenship people already hold. For more details, CIC has covered why Bill C-3 should not be treated as temporary or conditional.

If you think a Canadian-born ancestor might put you in scope of being a Canadian citizen, CanadaVisa has a citizenship by descent eligibility checker that is a reasonable starting point.

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