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
Filling Out My Application
One of the ways that the attorney that I spoke to intimidated me into paying her thousands of dollars was to tell me that the application itself was complicated and that there needed to be justifications written in legalese
Well, the thousands of people that have gone through the process without an attorney undercuts that argument. In fact, once I opened up the application myself, I realized that it was pretty straightforward
The application itself (CIT 0001) even has instructions. If I had read those instructions prior to speaking to the attorney, I probably would have realized that her statements about was required weren’t correct
One thing to note - anywhere that a box doesn’t apply to you, they tell you to write N/A so that they know that skipping it wasn’t a mistake
Also, they could have changed the form since I filled it out! Make sure you read all the instructions carefully and don’t just copy and paste my answers!
My Answers
I completed the application PDF on my computer with the exception of the signature. Then I printed, signed, and shipped!
I want to reiterate - these are MY answers. You are not me, so our answers won’t match in most places! I’m providing because I had never (and still have not) seen anyone else’s application. A lot of the evaluation of our application packages is dependent on the actual Officer who reviews the file too so it’s not possible to know what a “perfect” application looks like!
At the top of the application, there’s a question that asks “Do Any of These Apply to You?” Opinion about whether you should choose “I never had a citizenship certificate and I was born outside of Canada AND my parent was a Canadian citizen before I was born; I wasn’t adopted by my Canadian parent” or “I think I’m a Canadian Citizen and want to know for sure” are divided, but it doesn’t really seem to make a difference. I wasn’t adopted, so I went ahead and chose the first one (BTW - if you or someone in your descendent line were adopted, things can get a little confusing and this was not a hurdle that I had to overcome. I would check out communities in Free Resources to get additional guidance)
I got really good at typing “N/A” on the form because I wanted to make sure that every text box either had an answer or “N/A” so that the IRCC Agent reviewing my file knew that I didn’t miss anything by mistake
Section 1
Since Canada has two official languages, you can communicate with the Canadian government in either English or French. My first language is English so there was really no reason for me to answer anything else.
Section 2
I had never applied for anything else from the Canadian Government, so I didn’t have a UCI at the time that I submitted my application, so I put a “N/A” in the box. For more info on UCI, check out the Glossary.
Section 3
Another easy one. This would be my first citizenship certificate, so I chose “No” and put “N/A” in the rest of the boxes.
Section 4
I asked for a digital copy of my citizenship certificate. I don’t really know why anyone would ask for a paper copy to be honest other than that’s what some people are just used to (especially in the US).
Section 5
This section asked for my information as it appeared on my birth certificate and that’s the default info they use for the actual certificate. You do have the option to change it in Section 6 and they asked for my current name in this section.
Section 6
This is where you can opt to have your citizenship certificate be updated with a different name/date of birth/gender. I did consider requesting my current name to be put on the certificate, but I decided to leave it with my birth name. Just like in the United States, when you apply for a Canadian passport, you can submit a certified record to prove the name change and that’s what I plan to do since I already had that record
Section 7
I have no idea what happened to my original birth certificate, so I had to request a new one from the state where I was born. In the box, I wrote: “My original birth certificate was lost. I am including a new, certified copy that was issued in January 2026.”
Section 8
Ok, this is where I started to feel a little overwhelmed. Up until this point, I had been answering questions about myself which everyone has done on a million forms their whole lives. But now, I was answering questions about my parents. I made parent 1 the parent whose line I’m basing my claim on and diligently checked the official records that I had again to make sure that I inputted the correct information.
I have been No Contact (NC) with my parents for a couple years and I was surprised that filling out this info felt a little uncomfortable. I can’t explain it other than trauma is weird sometimes.
I did say that Parent 1 is/was a Canadian citizen, since that’s the legal theory behind my claim to citizenship. In the explanation, I wrote “Parent 1, <full name>, is a citizen by descent, because his father, <full name>, was a Canadian citizen.” The IRCC Agent reviewing my application already knows the laws, so I didn’t feel compelled to add any legal citations, though I know that some people do. I’m just not an attorney and the form didn’t say to include that, so I didn’t.
My father, parent 1, has never lived in Canada, so in the section that asked when he entered Canada to live, I said “N/A” and I put his dates away from Canada as his date of birth to present.
Section 9
Now on to the grandparents. I was grateful that there were less questions in this section and knocked those out pretty quick. Since my Gen0 (gen zero) was my great-grandfather, I used an addendum that someone else made to document the same info for him as well (it’s linked in Resources if you’re curious).
Sections 10-14
These were straightforward questions and I made sure to put N/A in any of the boxes that didn’t apply to me so that the IRCC didn’t think that I missed them by mistake.
Section 15
In my case, I didn’t end up using an attorney (you can read more about that in a different post because that was drama), and I wasn’t applying with anyone else/didn’t have someone else I wanted to be able to deal with my case, so my answers were all no or N/A. It also meant that I didn’t have to fill out IMM 5476.
Section 16
I checked all the boxes, printed the form, and signed and dated.