CIMM - Citizenship Certificates and Ceremonies

Key messages

• On March 14, 2020, in response to the evolving COVID-19 situation, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada cancelled all citizenship ceremonies, tests and re-tests until further notice.
• The Department advised all applicants who had been scheduled for a citizenship ceremony that their scheduled event had been cancelled. We also told them that they could contact us if they felt their case was urgent, and that we would consider urgent processing on a case-by-case basis.
• The Department began holding virtual citizenship ceremonies, beginning with individuals and families who had contacted Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada noting the need for citizenship urgently, including for example, employment requirements.
• As of June 11, 2020, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has conducted 274 virtual ceremonies, and sworn in 353 new Canadian citizens.
• Virtual citizenship ceremonies are now being scheduled for other ceremony ready clients. Clients are being contacted about their virtual ceremony date.

Supplementary Messages

Citizenship Certificates and Business Resumption

• The Department has developed a Business Resumption Plan in response to the operational impacts of COVID-19. The plan includes a list of measures for the strategic resumption of service during and post physical distancing, including virtual ceremonies and electronic knowledge tests.
• While the Department scaled down its operations due to COVID-19, urgent proofs (certificates) of citizenship continue to be processed for the purpose of repatriating Canadians to Canada; between March 17 and May 31, 2020, around 1,300 proofs of citizenship have been processed.

Virtual Citizenship Ceremonies

• The first virtual ceremony was held on April 1, 2020, for a university professor in Winnipeg. The professor was approved for federal funding to conduct COVID-19 research, and it was determined that Canadian citizenship and the ability to travel on a Canadian passport to research sites outside of Canada would facilitate this work. The ceremony took place with the use of Zoom web conferencing platform.
• More virtual ceremonies have occurred starting with urgent cases for one-on-one clients or family clusters. The Department continues to ramp up its capacity to undertake increasing numbers of virtual ceremonies in the near future for non-urgent clients, subject to technical and human capacity.
• As of June 11, 2020, 274 virtual ceremonies have occurred with 353 individuals becoming new Canadian citizens.

Citizenship Grant Processing Times

• The cancellation of citizenship events will have a considerable impact on overall processing times, which are already at 15 months, despite our Ministerial Commitment to process applications in 12 months.
• The Citizenship grant application processing system is paper-based and relies on manual data entry. Citizenship tests and ceremonies are typically held in-person in group events in local offices throughout the country.
• The Department is working on modernization initiative in the citizen grants line of business, which is critical to managing processing times for citizenship grants, ensuring more flexibility and improving client service.
• The program will be unable to sustainably return to the 12-month service standard without significant investments to transform the processing model by moving away from paper-based processing. This request was identified as part of Budget 2020 to modernize the process and support a potential citizenship fee elimination.

Supporting facts and figures

• Number of New Citizens in fiscal year 2019-2020 – 247,139
• There are currently 210,891 applications in the citizenship grant inventory, with approximately 43,000 individuals waiting for a citizenship ceremony and over 87,000 waiting for their knowledge test.

Background

Citizenship Business Resumption

• The Department has developed a Citizenship Resumption Plan. The plan includes a list of measures for the strategic resumption of service during and post physical distancing. The measures build on and reinforce the Department’s existing Plan to Modernize Citizenship.
• The Department is exploring whether the following measures could be implemented under existing legislative and  regulatory authorities and the implications of doing so:
  • Online Applications and Digital Processing;
  • Electronic Test Environment;
  • Virtual Ceremonies;
  • Electronic Citizenship Certificates.

Virtual Citizenship Ceremonies

• The Department has started increasing the number of virtual ceremonies with a phased approach. Ceremonies can be held on a one-on-one basis or for family clusters. Security requirements are being assessed and risks mitigated due to widely known lack of security features with unsecure platforms, such as video conferencing. Even though in-person ceremonies are open to the public, risk arises, for example, when steps to verify identity must also be performed virtually as part of the ceremony process.
• Urgent requests are currently being prioritized based on the following criteria:
  • need for citizenship status for employment purposes and education purposes;
  • essential travel; or
  • compassionate grounds (for example: health reasons).
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Citizenship Grant Processing Times

• Citizenship grant applications are paper-based and received via regular mail. Despite the pandemic, thousands of new applications continue to be received by the Department, but the physical files are not being distributed to the processing network due to physical distancing measures.
• Application intake volumes are also expected to increase due to factors such as the Multi-Year Levels Plan and possible changes to Citizenship fees, which will further contribute to longer processing times.
• The program will be unable to sustainably return to the 12-month service standard without significant investments that will transform the processing model by moving away from paper-based processing. Increasing timelines were already identified as a risk as part of a Budget 2020 ask to invest in the citizenship program to significantly modernize its processes to support a potential fee elimination.