Earlier this week, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (or IRCC) announced a new program to replace paper citizenship certificates with electronic citizenship certificates. This will eliminate long wait times to receive paper certificates and will allow new Canadian citizens to apply for Canadian passports faster.
It can take weeks to receive proof of Canadian citizenship in mail. Waiting to receive this valuable piece of paper is not fun if a newly minted Canadian citizen needs to travel abroad and apply for a Canadian passport. Dual citizens of Canada cannot return to Canada using another country’s passport.
The e-certificate initiative will roll out this summer. In this first phase, IRCC will invite applicants to choose whether they wish to receive electronic or paper citizenship certificate. IRCC kindly prepared a graph (please see below) summarizing what the Canadian citizenship applicants can expect in the initial phase:
