There are new amendments to the federal Citizenship Act. The Act has been amended largely in response to recent changes to U.S. immigration policy which now requires all travellers to present valid passports on entry to the U.S. Knowing that this change was coming, many Canadian residents, who assumed that they were Canadian citizens, applied for Canadian passports but were denied because they were actually not Canadian citizens.
Among the new amendments, the Act restores Canadian citizenship to those who were forced to renounce their Canadian citizenship when they became citizens of other countries. Dual citizenship was not permitted prior to 1977. It also restores citizenship to those who became citizens when the first Citizenship Act was passed on January 1, 1947 but who subsequently lost it for one reason or another. These include people born in Canada prior to 1947 and war brides, as well as British subjects who lived in Canada for at least five years before 1947. The restoring of citizenship will be retroactive to the date the person lost citizenship.
One of the significant changes is a limitation on who is automatically entitled to citizenship. Previously, the Act permitted Canadians to pass their citizenship on to endless generations of children born outside of Canada. This is no longer the case. Citizenship may now only be passed down to the first generation of children born outside of Canada. One of the parents must have been born in Canada or became a Canadian citizen after immigrating to Canada. However, all children born to a Canadian parent working outside of Canada for the federal or provincial governments or serving with the Canadian Forces will be granted Canadian citizenship regardless of the generation in which they were born outside of Canada.