Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is facing criticism from Acadian history experts who say the department is unfairly rejecting citizenship documents that come from archives in France and the United States. The experts argue IRCC is ignoring a basic fact of Acadian history: their records ended up in other countries because Acadians were forced out of Canada.

The dispute involves people affected by a review of citizenship grants issued under Bill C-3, a law passed Dec. 15, 2025. The law ended a rule that had limited citizenship by descent to only the first generation born outside Canada. Under the new law, people born abroad in the second generation or later could have citizenship restored or granted. Some of those people, including Acadians living abroad, have since been told by IRCC that their citizenship may have been granted in error. (The Globe and Mail)

In June, Peggy Sun, the registrar of Canadian Citizenship, sent letters to about 100 people known as "Lost Canadians" — people who had been denied or lost citizenship under the old rules. The letters said she had reason to believe their citizenship was not valid and was under review. Most who got the letters have since had their citizenship certificates and passports returned. But others received a second letter saying they may have been granted citizenship by mistake. (The Globe and Mail)

For Acadian applicants, IRCC has objected to baptismal records, birth records and other documents that come from France and the United States. Clint Bruce, a professor of Acadian studies at Université Sainte-Anne in Nova Scotia, called the department's position "deeply unfair." He said the difficulty applicants face in finding documentation comes directly from injustices done to the Acadians. (The Globe and Mail)

The history matters here. Between 1755 and 1764, the British forcibly expelled about 11,500 of the 14,000 Acadians from their homeland in the Maritimes. Think of it like a family being ordered out of their home and told to leave their photo albums and birth certificates behind. Official records from Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia — a major Acadian settlement — were carried to Louisiana during the expulsion. They sat in a church there for over 100 years before being moved to an archive in Baton Rouge. That is why key Acadian records are now held outside Canada. (The Globe and Mail)

One person whose citizenship certificate was suspended in June is an Acadian whose family settled in the United States. That case shows the clash between what IRCC expects in terms of paperwork and the reality that Acadian records were created and kept in countries far from where Acadians originally lived. (The Globe and Mail)

Bill C-3 was passed after years of lawsuits and campaigning by Lost Canadians. The December 2025 changes were meant to settle those cases by extending citizenship by descent beyond the first generation born abroad. But the review now underway has created new uncertainty for some people who thought their status was resolved. (Government of Canada)

The core problem is that IRCC's system for checking documents was built around Canadian records — the birth, death and marriage certificates that provincial governments keep. Acadian records are different. They were created by parish priests and colonial officials in several different countries over centuries of forced migration.

The broader issue is that scholars are not questioning IRCC's right to verify documents. Their concern is that applying a standard built for Canadian records effectively punishes applicants for not having documents that exist in Canada — when the reason those documents are not in Canada is the Expulsion itself. The Grand-Pré registers now sitting in Baton Rouge are not random finds. They are the foundational records of an entire community, displaced through a colonial policy whose consequences the review process does not appear to consider.

For IRCC, the operational task is clear. The department needs to tell apart citizenship that was validly granted from cases where status was given by mistake, especially after a law that expanded eligibility retroactively. The roughly 100 review letters Sun sent out suggest the department found a group worth a second look. But since most recipients have already had their documents restored, questions arise about how strong the initial evidence needed to be before suspending someone's citizenship.

The Acadian situation adds a layer IRCC has not publicly addressed. Unlike other Lost Canadian cases tied to the old first-generation rule, Acadian claims often depend on records whose history is inseparable from the Expulsion. How IRCC handles those records will determine whether Bill C-3's promise actually reaches a diaspora whose paperwork was shaped by forces no applicant controlled.