This site recounts my personal journey to apply for proof of Canadian citizenship. It is not legal advice. For official info check out the Government of Canada’s IRCC
Collecting Records
Note: In June 2026, IRCC clarified some of their language around the requirements for records. They have clarified that every application that does not have a birth certificate for each generation must include: 1) an explanation of why they did not include a birth certificate 2) proof that you tried to obtain a birth certificate 3) one or more secondary records such as baptismal and census records (I recommend at least two if you don’t have a birth certificate).
They also clarified that you are not allowed to rely solely on records obtained from third-party sources like Ancestry or FamilySearch. IRCC wants records from the authoritative source which is either the original issuing authority (like a government vital records office or an archive that certifies the authenticity).
While I applied with a mixture of certified and non-certified records, I did two birth records from the Archives of Ontario to be prepared if I was asked since you only get 60 days to respond to a request for more info and obtaining the records from archives often take much longer.
How I Decided Which Records to Include
While IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) hasn’t exactly been transparent about how they’re making decisions about which records are enough to make the proof, there are thousands of people who have applied and been approved, so we have some ideas about their order of preference (from strongest to weakest):
Birth certificate
Birth record (like a town register for births)
Baptism record (note: if you have a letter from an archive or church stating that one doesn’t exist, that’s a great thing to include so you can show you were actively searching)
And then, if it lists the place of birth or parents depending on what you’d like to prove:
4. Marriage record
5. Death record
6. Other official records such as military records, census records, court documents
If you have a certified birth record, great! If you don’t, move to the next item in the list. A good rule of thumb is the further down the list that you need to go, the more records that you should include. In my case, here’s what my submission looked like:
G0:
No birth certificate
Birth register for the town, but didn’t list first name - INCLUDED
No baptism record
Marriage record – INCLUDED
Death record - INCLUDED
Census records – 2 Canadian census records – INCLUDED
For each generation between me and my G0, I was lucky to be able to obtain a certified birth certificate. Since they were all men who had the same name their entire lives, that was all that was necessary for them. Because I had a name change, I also included legal records to show that as well.
How to Find Records
There are many ways to locate records (see note above about third-party sources):
Ancestry.com
Paid subscription
This is an easy-to-use website and has tons of user-generated information. Make sure to carefully review any “hints” because sometimes the information is mis-labeled or for someone that has the same name that’s not your relative
Familysearch.org
Free website
Run by the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) and has a huge amount of digital records available
Official Canadian census records
Free
Provided by the Canadian government for census information, select records available for years up to 1926
Note that the transcriptions are often crap and that’s how search works, so don’t get discouraged if you can’t find the person that you’re looking for. Search for other members of their family to find the right page and use wildcards to broaden the results that you’ll find: https://www.canada.ca/en/library-archives/collection/basics/using-collection-search.html#a2
Provincial archives (e.g., Archives of Ontario)
Take a look to see if the provincial government for the record that you’re looking for has an archive. For Ontario, they’ve digitized a lot of records, but you can also request copies of records (for a cost) that haven’t been digitized yet or get help from an archivist
Ontario: https://www.archives.gov.on.ca
Note: understandably there’s been a massive increase in demand for these services (one source claimed a 3000% increase this year). That means that these requests can take months to fulfill. The archives don’t seem to work any faster for people that send multiple requests for updates while they’re waiting
Hire a Private Researcher:
The Ontario Archives provides a list of private researchers that you can hire and there are lots more that you can find online: https://www.archives.gov.on.ca/get-research-help/
Note that these people are professionals and expect to be paid for their work. It’s not going to be cheap, and you will have to pay them for their time even if they don’t find the records that you’re looking for
Get help from a Volunteer Researcher:
Note: these are HIGH demand services, and these are VOLUNTEERS Please extend them kindness, consideration and gratitude. Most people applying are anxious about the process and that is not an excuse to be unkind. You’re not more deserving of their help than anyone else. The worst thing that you could do is be rude to them and cause them to stop doing this kind of work. That will hurt them, you, and a lot of people that could benefit from their help.
If you want someone who’s going to work on your timeline, you need to hire someone and expect to pay them for their work. But don’t be jerks to them either. Life is hard enough already.If you have a FamilySearch center nearby, there are volunteers available to help you search their records (this can be especially great if you’re new to genealogy/ancestry record searches!): https://www.familysearch.org/en/locations/centers/about
Note: while this is an organization that is run by a religious organization, the anecdotes that I’ve seen from people that visited reported that they were NOT even asked about their religious affiliation and not pressured to participate in any religious activities. Obviously, that’s not a guarantee, but it *seems* to be chill to Mormons and non-Mormons alike
r/Canadiancitizenship volunteers: https://www.reddit.com/r/Canadiancitizenship/wiki/index/document-search-volunteers/
Certified or Not?
Note: This is how I decided when I applied in April 2026. Since then, IRCC has clarified their requirements. While certified is not required, you are not allowed to rely solely on third-party sources. Often times, obtaining a record from an official source will result in it being certified. See the note at the top of the post for more information.
There are a lot of opinions on whether you need certified copies of records and there hasn’t been a lot of guidance from the IRCC. In at least one news article, they said that online family tree (third-party) records would not be sufficient alone.
My philosophy was this: if it was easy and relatively quick to get a certified record, I did. If I had a digitized copy of a record with a solid citation from a reputable organization that digitized it, I didn’t pursue a certified copy.
It was relatively easy, though it did take time and it was annoying, to request certified copies of birth certificates for myself, my father, and my grandfather. I was also able to get a certified copy of my great-grandfather (my G0 or G zero)’s death certificate. I didn’t have uncertified copies of those records anyway, so I needed them regardless.
For the Canadian census records, they were literally digitizations hosted by the Canadian government, so I felt confident using those with a link to the image online without requesting a certified copy from an archive which would have taken weeks or months and cost money.
For my great-grandfather’s marriage certificate, I didn’t get a certified copy. I found the record with citation information on FamilySearch. The original copy is stored in a basement in a city hall that doesn’t do records requests for records of that age, in a state that I don’t live in and would take a significant journey to get there. Note: In June 2026, I did order and receive a certified copy of this marriage certificate in case I was asked for it, but I don’t anticipate that I will.
The LDS Church (who owns/runs FamilySearch) is a well-respected digital archivist. Everyone in ancestry knows about them and understands their standing in the world of genealogy. By the time that I had applied, IRCC Officers had seen thousands of applications and I would bet that a significant percentage had included records from FamilySearch. I felt confident that I could get away with a copy from a digitized image with the citation. If this had been the ONLY record to show my G0’s birth location, I may have felt differently and obtained a certified copy, but because I was applying urgently, I still would have applied with the digital copy and submitted the certified copy via the webform as soon as I received it. Note: In June 2026, IRCC clarified that you cannot rely solely on third-party sources and opened investigations into 100 previously-approved applications. Many were re-approved very quickly, but at least 10-15% were required to obtain better/different records and are still outstanding as of August 2026. I did order certified copies of the G0 birth records as a result and do recommend that you do as well.