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Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Citizenship

Travelling to Canada: health check and quarantine

If you’re travelling by air, you need to follow all airline requirements and pass a health check conducted by airlines before you’re allowed to board your flight. Anyone who shows symptoms of COVID-19 will not be allowed to enter Canada by air.

ArriveCAN

As of November 21, 2020, you must use ArriveCAN before checking in at the airport or crossing the border to submit your

  • travel and contact information
  • quarantine plan
  • COVID-19 symptom self-assessment

Please bring your ArriveCAN receipt (electronic or paper) with you to show the border services officer upon arrival.

When you arrive in Canada, we’ll assess your health before you leave the port of entry. You must have a plan to quarantine for 14 days when you arrive in Canada. This is mandatory, even if you have no symptoms. If you don’t have a plan, you should not travel to Canada.

Only people who provide essential services, for example, truck drivers who regularly cross the border to maintain the flow of goods, are exempt from the quarantine requirements.

On this page:

Citizenship events

Online citizenship test

Due to COVID-19, we cancelled all in-person citizenship tests.

We’re now inviting some applicants to take the citizenship test online. Wait for us to invite you.

If you can’t or don’t want to do the test online, you may wait until in-person tests resume (date to be determined).

Video oath ceremony (virtual citizenship ceremony)

Due to COVID-19, we

  • cancelled all in-person citizenship ceremonies
  • started inviting applicants to take the Oath of Citizenship through video calls since April 1, 2020

We’ll

  • contact you soon with the time and date of your video oath ceremony
  • contact applicants with cancelled in-person ceremonies first
  • schedule the ceremonies based on the order we make decisions on the applications
    • This depends on the complexity of the application.

Please wait for us to invite you.

How we invite you

We’ll contact the email address or phone number you gave in your application. If your contact information changed, tell us using our Web form.

By email

If you provided an email address in your application, we’ll email you the invitation.

To avoid missing our emails

  • add email addresses ending in “@cic.gc.ca” to your email’s safe sender list
  • check your junk or spam folder regularly if you don’t see our message
By phone

Our agent will call you if we don’t have your email address. Our call may show up as

  • an “Unknown caller” in your caller ID
  • a number from outside of Canada

Answer your phone when you see these numbers so you don’t miss our calls.

After you respond to the phone call, we’ll send you the invitation by mail.

How to attend the video oath ceremony

You’ll attend the video oath ceremony via a Zoom videoconference call.  We’ll explain how to set up Zoom in your ceremony invitation.

Most in-person citizenship events are cancelled

To keep everyone safe, the following citizenship events are cancelled until further notice:

Check the information letter or email we sent you about the events being cancelled.

  • We’ll send you a new date and time as soon as possible.
  • If you gave us your email address in your application, we’ll contact you by email.
    • To avoid missing our emails, check your junk or spam folder.
    • Look for messages from email addresses ending in “@cic.gc.ca.”
  • If you didn’t provide an email address
    • we’ll send the cancellation letter by mail or we’ll call you
    • check your mailbox or voicemail messages often to see if you got it

Applications

Processing your citizenship application

Due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), we

  • are prioritizing Canadians who are trying to return Canada
  • can’t provide accurate processing times

You can

Submitting your application documents

If your documents are missing due to COVID-19 (for example, police certificates, passports, medical exam results, medical opinion forms):

  • we won’t close or refuse any applications in progress
  • we’ll automatically give you an extra 90 days to send us the documents from the deadline in the request letter
    • This applies even if the letter says you only have 30 or 90 days.
  • we’ll keep extending the deadline by 90 days until you can get the documents
  • you don’t have to contact us to get any of these extensions
  • once you’re able to, send us the missing documents as soon as possible to avoid further delays

This extension applies to all citizenship applications.

All citizenship applications

Urgent processing of applications

If you have an emergency, you can request urgent processing of your citizenship application.

  • We can only process citizenship applications urgently in special cases
  • We’ll check if your request meets the conditions for urgent processing
  • If it doesn’t meet the conditions, we’ll process your application normally

Find out when and how to apply urgently

New citizenship applications

We’re still accepting new citizenship applications.

Time you’ve lived in Canada (physical presence)

Extra days spent abroad due to COVID-19 will not count as days in Canada. You must still meet the physical presence requirement for your citizenship application.

If you’re a permanent resident

If you’re travelling or planning to travel, find out what you need to re-enter Canada.

You can use an expired permanent resident (PR) card to

  • apply for Canadian citizenship
  • bring to your citizenship test and ceremony

If you’re a dual Canadian citizen

You can only enter Canada with a

Find out who can travel to Canada

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Updates and related links

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