You May Already Be Canadian

February 19th, 2026
canada
I learned a few weeks ago that I'm a Canadian citizen. This was pretty surprising to me, since I was born in the US to American parents, both of which had American parents. You don't normally suddenly become a citizen of another country! But with Bill C-3, anyone with any Canadian ancestry is now Canadian. [1]

In my case my mother's, mother's, father's mother's mother was Canadian. While that is really quite far back, there isn't a generational limit anymore.

Possibly you're also a Canadian citizen? Seems worth checking! With how much migration there has been between the US and Canada, and citizenship requiring only a single ancestor, this might mean ~5-10% of Americans are now additionally Canadian, which is kind of nuts.

I very much think of myself as an American, and am not interested in moving to Canada or even getting a passport. I am planning to apply for a Citizenship Certificate, though, since it seems better to have this fully documented. This means collecting the records to link each generation, including marital name changes, back to my thrice-great grandmother. It's been a fun project! I'm currently waiting to receive the Consular Report of Birth Abroad records for my mother and grandmother, since they were both born outside the US to American parents.


[1] This is slightly too strong. For example, it doesn't apply if you're born after 2025-12-15 (I'm guessing you weren't), and no one in the chain can have renounced their Canadian citizenship. But the caveats all exclude very few people.

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, mastodon, bluesky

Recent posts on blogs I like:

The benchmarkpocalypse

There's been a lot of talk about the vulnpocalypse, to which I don't have much to add because I'm not a security person, but I haven't seen much discussion on the closely related (and to be fair, less serious, issue), the benchmarkpocalyps…

via Posts on August 17, 2026

You can't join the secret inner circle of cool effective altruists

I, and a lot of other people I know, seem to believe something like this:

via Thing of Things August 11, 2026

Microfictions 2

A few more microfictions, still no LLMs.

via Evan Fields August 7, 2026

more     (via openring)