PEI archives logs 1,776 ancestry requests — Cic News Canadian Citizenship Updates
Prince Edward Island’s Public Archives and Records Office received 1,776 ancestry-record requests from January 1 to the end of April 2026, after Canada changed its citizenship by descent rules. The surge has pushed cic news canadian citizenship updates from a legal change into a records problem for applicants who now need official proof of Canadian ancestry.
Bill C-3 took effect on December 15, 2025, and eliminated Canada’s first-generation limit on citizenship by descent. People applying for a proof of Canadian citizenship certificate must first gather official copies of documents showing the Canadian ancestor in their family line.
PEI archives under strain
A spokesperson for Prince Edward Island’s Public Archives and Records Office said monthly requests for ancestry records increased by 150%. The office received 585 requests throughout all of 2025, then 1,776 requests in the first four months of 2026 and another 732 requests in May 2026.
The office said it had received four years' worth of requests in four months. Applicants are now being told to expect a wait of approximately three months, after the office previously responded within a week at most.
American applicants lead demand
The Public Archives and Records Office said 99.9% of the requests have come from American applicants. A small number have come from Ireland, Australia, and France.
Those applicants are mainly asking for birth records, baptismal records, marriage certificates, death records, and census records. The archive says the three-month estimate is not accurate because the numbers are still surging, which leaves families trying to assemble documents while the queue keeps growing.
Provincial archives face delays
The pressure is not limited to Prince Edward Island. Quebec’s Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec reported a 3,000% increase in requests, and the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick said genealogy-related requests have quadrupled in 2026 compared with 2025.
Many provincial archives have reported wait times of six weeks or longer as of the time of writing. For applicants building a citizenship file, that means the first stop is no longer an application form but a request for records, and in Prince Edward Island that file search is now taking far longer than it did before December 15, 2025.
