Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Citizenship
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Entering Canada: Mandatory quarantine, COVID-19 testing and other requirements
Before you travel to Canada, make sure you know the rules and what you need to do before and after you arrive:
- Quarantine or isolation plan
- COVID-19 testing for travellers
- Requirements for flying to Canada
- Mandatory hotel stay for all air travellers
Use the ArriveCAN app at the border or airport
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 symptoms self-assessment
Please bring your ArriveCAN receipt (electronic or paper) with you to show the border services officer upon arrival.
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 card (PR card) to
If you’re a dual Canadian citizen
You can only enter Canada with a
Find out who can travel to Canada
Citizenship events
Citizenship tests and interviews
Due to COVID-19, we
- cancelled all in-person citizenship tests and interviews
- now offer online citizenship tests
- have limited capacity to schedule online tests and interviews
- are scheduling urgent requests for the tests and interviews if you qualify and apply for urgent processing
Online citizenship test
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.
Contact us through the Web form if you
- had a ceremony scheduled on or before March 15, 2020, and
- haven’t received an invitation for a video oath ceremony.
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:
- in-person citizenship ceremonies
- We’ll contact you to schedule a video oath ceremony
- in-person citizenship tests and retests
- We’ll contact you to invite you for an online citizenship test
- most retests, interviews and hearings (including videoconference hearings)
- Wait for us to contact you.
- If you need to change your appointment, contact the office that sent the invitation.
- The contact information is in the letter we sent.
- citizenship events in our temporary offices (itinerant service trips)
Processing your citizenship application
We’re still accepting new applications for citizenship.
Due to COVID-19, we
- are prioritizing Canadians who are trying to return to Canada
- have limited capacity to process citizenship applications
- can’t provide accurate processing times
It’s taking us longer to
- check that your application is complete
- send you an acknowledgement of receipt (AOR) letter or email with your application number
- We send you the AOR after we receive your application and check that it’s complete.
Until you get your AOR
- the Client Support Centre won’t have information about your application status
- you can’t check your application status online
- don’t submit a Web form to check your application status
Check your application status
After you receive your AOR
- you can check your application status online, or
- if you can’t check your status online
- find out why you can’t check your status
- we’ll let you know as soon as there are updates to your application
Submitting missing 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.
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
- for Canadian citizenship (grant of citizenship or naturalization)
- for a Canadian citizenship certificate (proof of citizenship)
- to resume Canadian citizenship
- to give up Canadian citizenship (renunciation)
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.
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