Canada: IRCC approved 99 percent of urgent proof-of-citizenship requests in Bill C-3's first eight months

New IRCC figures show how urgent processing has worked for proof-of-citizenship applications since Bill C-3 took effect on 15 December 2025.

What the data shows

• IRCC received about 6,726 proof-of-citizenship applications asking for urgent processing between 15 December 2025 and 14 August 2026.

• It processed 5,845 of them and approved 5,804 (99.3%). Only 17 were refused, 23 were withdrawn and 1 was abandoned.

• That works out to roughly 730 urgent files processed per month. Output dipped sharply in June 2026, when IRCC reviewed some recently issued certificates (13 to 30 June), and recovered in July.

• Urgent requests peaked in March 2026 at 1,362 and have fallen each month since.

Why it matters

The regular proof-of-citizenship wait was 34 months as of IRCC's 9 October 2026 update, with about 130,700 people waiting. Urgent processing can shorten that to weeks, but only for set reasons. IRCC updated its urgent-processing guidance on 28 September 2026; listed reasons include moving a child under 18 to Canada, resolving statelessness, travel for a family death or serious illness, giving up a foreign citizenship by a deadline, a job or school place, or access to social benefits.

Caveats: the data does not show how many urgency requests were turned down (those files simply continue at the normal pace) or how long urgent files took. The figures are IRCC operational data released under an Access to Information request and the percentages are CIC News calculations.

Source: CIC News, 23 October 2026.