27 January, 2015

Record number of new citizens welcomed in 2014

Canada welcomed more than 260,000 new citizens in 2014 year, thanks to the government's improvements to the citizenship program as well as recent reforms to the Citizenship Act, Canada's Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander announced today. This is more new Canadians than in any year in Canada's history and more than double the number from last year.
Through recent changes to the Citizenship Act, the government has made strides over the past year to improve the citizenship application process, and applicants are already seeing results.

• A new citizenship decision-making process, which came into force August 1, has streamlined the process from three steps to one. Since implementing the new process, more than 115,000 people have become Canadian citizens - a 90 percent increase from the same time period last year.
• Canada's citizenship application backlog has been reduced by 17 percent since June 2014, and is at its lowest level in almost three years.
• The government is on track to eliminate the citizenship application backlog and reduce processing times to less than one year sometime in the next fiscal year.

To have applicant fees more closely reflect the costs associated with processing citizenship applications, citizenship processing fees will increase from $300 to $530 for applicants whose complete applications are received after Jan. 1, 2015. These applicants will benefit from the processing improvements outlined above.
Applications for a grant and resumptions of citizenship to a minor are exempt from this change. The $100 Right of Citizenship fee for successful applicants remains the same. Other fees for services, such as for citizenship proofs, are not changing.
www.news.gc.ca