Canadian Passport: 7th Best in the World! Discover Visa-Free Destinations

Canadian citizenship is a prerequisite for obtaining a Canadian passport. For non-Canadian citizens, obtaining permanent residency and fulfilling Canada’s physical presence criteria are typically the first steps towards obtaining citizenship. Accordingly, you must have spent a minimum of three of the previous five years—or 1,095 days—living in Canada.

Note: You could be able to inherit your parent’s citizenship if you are the direct child of a Canadian citizen (who was a citizen at the time of your birth). In order to extend this eligibility to certain foreign-born Canadians’ offspring, new regulations have also been developed.

In order to apply for Canadian citizenship, immigrants must fulfill additional conditions after obtaining permanent residency and fulfilling the physical presence requirements. In particular, these are:

• Tax Filing: During your residency, you must file any necessary tax returns and make any outstanding payments;
• Passing the Canadian citizenship test is required.
• Language Proficiency: Demonstrate that your proficiency in English or French meets the requirements of the Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) level 4 at the very least.

Normally, the naturalization process takes three years or longer to grant citizenship in Canada.