Catholic archives overwhelmed by Bill C3

Since Bill C-3 passed last December, Canadian Catholic archivists have arguably never been busier, more visible or more relied upon than they were in the first nine months of 2026.

The new law, the “Lost Descendants Bill,” lifts the first-generation cap on citizenship by descent, a restriction the Ontario Superior Court of Justice found unconstitutional on Dec. 19, 2023. Eligible descendants born abroad before Dec. 15, 2025, can now claim citizenship across multiple generations, but must provide records documenting their lineage and establishing an unbroken chain of parentage back to an ancestor born in Canada or who became a naturalized Canadian.

Canadians born or adopted abroad must have spent at least three years in Canada to pass on citizenship to children born or adopted outside the country on or after Dec. 15, 2025. That time must come before the child’s birth or adoption

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Because of this new landscape, overwhelming numbers of foreign nationals, predominantly Americans, are flooding diocesan archival departments and individual parishes with requests for sacramental records — baptism, confirmation, marriage, annulment documents — that support their efforts to reclaim their Canadian citizenship.

Anxiety over the U.S. political and social climate, parents wanting their kids to access benefits that come with Canadian citizenship (work opportunities, an additional passport, health care, lower tuition, etc.) and interest in reconnecting with Canadian lineage are widely recognized as drivers of this phenomenon.

Debra Majer, the Diocese of London’s archivist, returned to work in January after the Christmas holidays to find an unusual number of Americans asking for baptismal certificates of an ancestor dating as far back as 1850, 1840 and even 1770. These requests continue to arrive unceasingly — more than 1,000 by the end of summer. Comparatively, she completed 100 during all of 2025.

“The volume was unprecedented,” said Majer. “By mid-March it was clear that I had this crazy backlog, I don’t have the support and I can’t keep going into registers because they’re very vulnerable and fragile. I can’t keep pulling a register from 1802 out — my job is to preserve records, not destroy them,” she added with a chuckle.  

Majer, who oversees records dating back to 1760 from Our Lady of the Assumption in Windsor, Ontario’s oldest Catholic parish (originally established as a Jesuit mission in 1728 before becoming a canonical church in 1767), had to pause responding to these requests for several months to determine how best to manage the inundation.

She shared that the rest of her job — assisting academic research, developing diocesan archival history initiatives, supporting religious communities with various projects — had essentially “shut down” because of the deluge. Messaging had to be updated on the diocesan website, the department’s voicemail and even on Reddit.

Majer has hired an assistant and repaired the microfilm reader needed to read these centuries-old documents to help with the backlog.

The new normal spawned by Bill C-3 takes on a different complexion in each Canadian diocese as records are stored differently. While London has a consolidated system, each of the 119 Diocese of Hamilton parishes maintains its own archival records.

Dominy Williams, the Hamilton diocese’s library and archives director, does not contend with the same steady stream of weekly applications as member parishes, but “some of our older parishes are getting 25 to 30 requests a week and are just completely overwhelmed by the number coming in.”

Still, Williams has also found herself responding to way more records requests. From January to April alone, she received 99 genealogy-related appeals compared to 74 in all of 2025.

Williams said Hamilton Catholics “have a true heart towards wanting to be pastoral and help people,” but it is a daunting task as churches have limited staff to go above and beyond. Some parish communities have been able to recruit volunteers, but she emphasized that this sacramental record work “is outside (their) regular mandate” and is “definitely taking them away from their ability to do their core duties, and me here as well, within the diocese.”

This unfolding saga, very much in its infancy, has underscored the need for the Hamilton diocese to microfilm and digitize all historic records. Williams is actively tackling this project, which she believes will require more than a year of work.

“I would say that the sacramental records in the Diocese of Hamilton are really our most important documents because they (reflect) the growth of the diocese,” said Williams. “And there's the people's records. They do connect to these very personal family histories. Because there are all of these extra requests, the sacramental ledger books are being accessed more often. They're very fragile. And it puts them at risk. So hopefully this digitization will allow for their proper safekeeping moving forward.”

The Archdiocese of Toronto has also seen requests for certified baptismal certificates to support citizenship applications rise from six in both 2024 and 2025 to 127 thus far in 2026. Frances O’Regan, the Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto (ARCAT) director, acknowledged “this number may seem low” comparative to other dioceses. She credits this to her department’s effective work redirecting requests to the ARCAT Online database, as all microfilmed records have already been digitized and published for personal research.

Additionally, people have been redirected to the Archives of Ontario for civil records or to individual parishes for church annals that stretch back further than the late 1860s emergence of civil documents.

But make no mistake: the day-to-day life of ARCAT has been altered, as dealing with the requests that do funnel in demands a lot of time and effort.

“There is often a lot of back-and-forth between our office, the requesters and the parishes. We try to figure out a solution that works best for all parties involved,” said O’Regan. “This is labour intensive and time consuming for the archives as well as the parishes. Several hours a day can be occupied by keeping up with these communications, taking time away from our regular sacramental record searches, as well as other tasks we undertake daily.”

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To date, 26 parish secretaries have reached out to ARCAT for advice about the citizenship policy.

Judith Dimitri at the Archdiocese of Ottawa-Cornwall had never received a sacramental record request to support citizenship before 2025, and she thought the five she received in 2025 were a striking development.

“I thought at the time that this was weird,” said Dimitri. “I didn’t know there was any basis for those requests, but I fulfilled them. It still prickled my senses when I met with my chancery team in January.”

Dimitri’s sense that something was afoot was right on target. The five requests in 2025 exploded upward to 180 as of mid-September, which she redirects to parishes if she receives sufficient information, as they have the sacramental registers (a pilot project is underway to digitize these).

Her intuition helped her be proactive in establishing processing guidelines for parishes that explain the why behind the requests, what identification and information applicants should provide to aid a genealogical search, how to certify a record and the fee parishes should charge for this service.

The pricing is different in each diocese. In Ottawa it is $70, while in Calgary it is $100 for requests related to Bill C-3.

Archdiocese of Winnipeg director of archives Tyyne Petrowski, and Jennifer Sargent, the Vancouver archdiocese’s archivist, records manager and privacy officer, credit strong communication among members of the Catholic Archives Group (CAG) — chaired by Williams — for providing advanced notice starting in January and February of what was coming their way.  

Petrowski did not have a hard figure to present, but “75 to 80 per cent of the requests were coming from Americans starting at the end of April,” while beforehand these calls for sacramental records emanated from Canadians either for personal genealogy or for affirming Métis status.

“Helping with the certificates where I can has basically become 75 per cent of my work week, if not more,” said Petrowski. “From less than a quarter to 75. Any of the large projects I had planned for this year have been sidelined.”

As for Sargent in Vancouver, these bids soared from “basically zero to 50.”

“I know when you say it doesn't actually sound like a lot,” said Sargent. “But each one of these requests is going to take a few hours of my time because it's not just a matter of searching a database.”

Sargent capitalized on the warning by working to develop an online form dedicated to these requests. It costs “$75 per search, not per record found, just because we realized there was so much work involved,” she said.

Acknowledging how this avalanche of records requests is also hitting governmental archives, municipalities and every religious denomination, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) did host some information sessions.

All the archivists who spoke to the Register said the IRCC communicated to groups that there is no expectation for them to alter their workload to meet this burgeoning demand.

“They were kind of saying, these are supplementary records.There's no requirement,” said Petrowski. "I think it seemed like (they were) distancing themselves from having to support any solutions.”

Where the IRCC is lacking, the CAG members are helping each other. An ad hoc committee has been established to work on the path ahead.

“We’re interested in helping each other as a group and also helping to research more as a group than trying to help the IRCC understand our reality,” said Dimitri.

Williams added that the CAG is creating a list that helps researchers become aware of what records each Canadian diocese maintains.

“(Just) a general idea of our geographic boundaries and the dates for where our records would fall,” said Williams. “A lot of people are contacting us, and they don't really know. They might need records from Ottawa, but they're reaching out to me here in Hamilton.”

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It is a developing process, and more bumps in the road will inevitably emerge as the Canadian Catholic archivists, along with the secular counterparts and those in other faith traditions, work to figure it out.

Majer commended everyone seeking documents amid this deluge — Americans seeking citizenship requests, the academic researchers and the Catholics in the diocese — for “being patient.”

(Amundson is an associate editor and writer for The Catholic Register.)