CANADA is playing the squid games for permanent residency, but is planning to hand out citizenship left and right
Canada and the Theater of Extremes: Or how we've again overstepped common sense on Citizenship
Canadian citizenship laws have been largely unexamined for a long time, and as Canada increasingly tightens the screws on those who already live here, work, pay taxes, study, and integrate, this situation seems even more absurd.
Today, the country is reducing opportunities for permanent residency:
— closing programs, as happened in Quebec, for international graduates who have already worked for 3-4 years;
— limiting quotas for thousands of people in various provinces who have worked for 2-4 years and have long been part of local communities.
These people know Canada, have absorbed its language, rules, and culture...but the path to permanent residency and citizenship is becoming increasingly narrow for them.
At the same time, Canada is inviting citizens who have never lived here, studied, worked, volunteered, or graduated from high school, and don't even speak the official language, but whose parents or even grandparents once received Canadian citizenship abroad.
What is this? Political arithmetic?
To me, it smells like a swell of "paper" voters for future elections.
A country that refuses integrated people "here and now" but hands out citizenship to those who don't even know what Canada seems like.
The rules for acquiring Canadian citizenship have changed several times over the past 20 years, and the latest amendments limited the ability to pass on Canadian citizenship by blood (not by country of birth) to the first generation.
Canada decided to correct this injustice by order of the Federal Court in 2023.
No sooner said than done. BUT, as always, not as is it supposed to be...
Where exactly can we see the discrimination?
The law:
- penalized Canadians for mobility;
- deprived children of status due to circumstances beyond their control;
- created an illogical hierarchy of "good" and "bad" Canadians;
- broke the generational chain in families who were much more closely connected to Canada than was apparent on paper.
Diplomats, researchers, engineers, employees of international companies—they all faced the situation of their children losing their citizenship, even though they themselves grew up, studied, and worked in Canada.
So what's changed now?
Instead of a strict generational limitation, the criterion of substantial connection to Canada is being introduced (although I personally don't see any substantial connection here).
Government benchmark:
• 1,095 days of physical presence in Canada before the child's birth.
AND THAT'S IT! Of course, there are many advantages here:
- It corrects a real historical injustice.
- It supports families living and working in a globalized world.
- It eliminates discrimination recognized by the courts.
- It emphasizes connections, not the accident of birth.
This is the part of the law that's hard to criticize: it truly gives people back what was unjustly lost.
BUT, in my opinion, there are more shortcomings here, since now we find ourselves in the mirror image of the opposite extreme.
At first, Canada said, "You're Canadian, but you can't pass on citizenship to your child. Your birthplace is bad."
Now Canada says, "Grant citizenship to anyone—even someone who will never see Canada and doesn't speak its language." Both approaches suffer from the same problem:
in neither case was a genuine connection to Canada placed at the center of the system. And this raises questions.
- A child with no contact with Canada receives citizenship.
- The country is creating a "Canadian diaspora" on paper, not by increasing the country's population.
In fact, Canada hasn't found a balance—it has simply jumped from one extreme to the other.
Yesterday, excessive restrictions;
today, excessive expansion.
Both systems ignore the most important thing: connection to the country must be proven, not assumed based on the birth of one of the parents.
A mature, logical path could have been different:
Restore the opportunity to obtain citizenship for those cut off by the old rules. But do so based on the principle of belonging, not automatism: lived there for three years, passed the language test, passed the test—welcome.
For true Canadians, this is not an obstacle, but if someone considers such requirements "too much," then a logical question arises:
Are they even Canadians, beyond a line on a document?
Today, we see not reform, but a theatre of extremes, where common sense is a rare, silent guest, denied a microphone. Therefore, the main question remains open:
When we are going to act logically, not “geographically” or “politically”?
Oleksandra Melnykova, Canadian Immigration and Refugee Consultant.
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