Group prepares court challenge over citizenship of Canadian soldiers who died in world wars
A group of Canadians, including family members of soldiers killed in action, is preparing a federal court challenge. The group wants the court to force Ottawa to declare that Canadian soldiers who died in the world wars were citizens of Canada, and not only British subjects. The Globe and Mail reported the plan on November 11, 2026.
More than 100,000 soldiers died fighting for Canada in the First and Second World Wars. None of them were officially Canadian citizens.
The federal government's position is that no one born in Canada was a Canadian citizen until the Citizenship Act came into force in 1947. That law created Canadian citizenship as a legal status. On January 3, 1947, then prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King received the first Canadian citizenship certificate at a ceremony in the Supreme Court. In 2022, then immigration minister Sean Fraser marked the 75th anniversary of the Act.
Some documents from the period point the other way. Death certificates of soldiers killed in the Second World War recorded them as Canadian. A 1942 government pamphlet, Battle Of Brains - Canadian Citizenship and the Issues of War, was given to Canadian soldiers. A 1946 official pamphlet issued to war brides who married Canadian soldiers, airmen and naval personnel said that completing immigration formalities automatically made a person a Canadian citizen.
Arthur Meighen, who later became prime minister, told the 1919 Versailles peace conference that he spoke as a Canadian citizen.
Separately, a parliamentary petition calls on the House of Commons to acknowledge that soldiers who died in both world wars were Canadian citizens. Vancouver MP Patrick Weiler introduced the petition in the House at the end of October. Former veterans affairs minister Jim Karygiannis backs it. A petition is a formal written request to the House of Commons.
The campaign to persuade the government to correct the historical record is led by Don Chapman. Researcher Peggy Ann Osborne helped compile the dossier for the court action.
