The Conservative Party is making moves to restrict birthright citizenship for some people in Canada.
In a statement shared on X on Tuesday, Oct. 7, Conservative MP and immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner said she had moved to amend Bill C-3, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025), to end birthright citizenship for children of temporary residents.
Essentially, the Conservatives want to limit automatic Canadian citizenship to individuals who have at least one parent who is either a citizen or a permanent resident.
According to Canadian law, any individual born in the country is automatically a Canadian citizen.
Rempel Garner argued that Canada’s unrestricted birthright citizenship is “likely to be abused by people seeking to stay in the country after their visa expires” or after an asylum claim is found invalid.
Having a child in Canada does not automatically make a temporary resident a Canadian citizen.
The Conservative MP’s motion to amend Bill C-3 on Tuesday was voted down by the Liberals and Bloc Québécois in the immigration committee.
The federal Minister of Justice Sean Fraser told reporters on Wednesday that he believes the government should “maintain birthright citizenship in Canada.”
“I don’t know if I can be any more direct than that,” he said.
“Would create a second class of people in Canada”
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Rempel Garner cited Baker v. Canada, a Supreme Court of Canada case that involved a Jamaican woman who was undocumented in Canada for 11 years. During that time, she gave birth to four children in Canada, who were therefore automatically Canadian citizens.
In 1992, she was deported from Canada for overstaying her visitor visa and continuing to work without authorization. The woman had asked an immigration officer to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds, but her request was denied.
“This case is important because the officer essentially was completely dismissive of humanity,” Toronto-based immigration lawyer Elizabeth Long told Daily Hive.
She said she finds it ironic that the Conservatives are using this case as an argument for ending birthright citizenship for temporary residents in Canada.
“It’s a seminal case in which the court had directed us to have compassion and recognize the situation when someone has children who are born in Canada, who are Canadian, and an officer is not willing to have their parents stay in Canada,” she explained.
Rempel Garner also claimed that “birth tourism” — the practice of travelling to another country as a visitor to give birth for the child to obtain citizenship — is on the rise.
According to the latest data most closely associated with birth tourism, the number of non-resident births in Canada in 2022-2023 rose to 3,575 from 2,245 in 2021. The number of non-resident births in Canada reached its peak in 2019, with nearly 5,700 births.
However, Daniel Bernhard, CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, told Daily Hive that in the grand scheme of things, birth tourism is a “very small issue.”
“We issue 300,000 citizenships every year to immigrants. There are 400,000 permanent residents coming in this year. [Birth tourism] is such a minuscule issue,” he said.
He added that claims that immigrants are moving to Canada to have children as a way of cheating the system are not true.
“Immigrants are not here to eat off our plate,” he explained. “We don’t do immigration for compassion alone. Canada needs immigrants more than immigrants need us. If you look at shortages in the healthcare system, childcare system, in all of these really important sectors where Canadians are suffering…to say that immigrants are the problem is just a complete misunderstanding of what’s going on.”
Other countries that restrict birthright citizenship include Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.
Similar to Canada, the Republican Party in the United States is also pushing to end birthright citizenship, which Long said will be difficult because it’s in the U.S. Constitution.
“This idea that some people are more Canadian than others because of their parentage, I think, is very troubling,” expressed the immigration lawyer. “If they change the citizenship laws…that essentially would create a second class of people in Canada.”
Long explained that if children born to temporary residents in Canada don’t receive birthright citizenship, they would be stateless, especially if they’re not able to obtain citizenship from another country. These children would have to undergo the same application process as individuals who weren’t born in Canada, which includes applying for permanent residency.
Birthright citizenship and Bill C-3: “More about politics than anything else”
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Bernhard argued that the debate surrounding birthright citizenship and Bill C-3 is “more about politics than anything else.”
Bill C-3, introduced in June, would extend Canadian citizenship by descent to beyond the first generation, which means it would automatically grant Canadian citizenship to anyone who would be a citizen today if not for the current first-generation limit.
“There are a lot of other very significant challenges within the immigration system, and those are not being addressed because we’re spending time debating these relatively minor, but extremely salacious interventions instead,” he said.
Bernhard said the federal government should address the decline in the uptake of Canadian citizenship by eligible permanent residents.
“The people who are able to claim citizenship are deciding not to do so,” he said. “That, I think, is a major concern.”
He said issues surrounding the complexities of Canada’s immigration system, including processing times, should also be addressed.
Bernhard noted the healthcare crisis in Canada and the thousands of doctors trained outside of Canada who still face barriers to work.
“Do we want to be a shrinking, aging and poorer society, or do we want to grow and renew ourselves?” he said.
“If we’d like to do that and continue providing services at the level Canadians expect, then we need to make sure that the people who are providing those services can stay in Canada, play for our team and become enthusiastic citizens for the long term.”