More Than 10,000 People To Become Citizens Of Canada In The Coming Weeks

26 Feb 2014

Large-scale citizenship ceremonies are to be held this month and next month, and through this almost 11,000 people will become citizens of Canada.

In just one ceremony, that would be held in Montreal, over 1,000 people from 93 countries will become Canadian citizens in just one day. Chris Alexander, Citizenship and Immigration Minister quoted that the backlog of citizen applications is getting reduced by this.

He also said that the measures proposed in the Bill C-24, the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, will reorganize the Citizenship Act by improving the decision making process and reducing the wait time.

The expected changes will improve the processing time to less than a year and the existing backlog will get reduced by 2015 or 2016, by almost 80%.

Canada has accepted the highest level of immigration in its history since 2006; every year, on an average of 2,57,000 become new citizens. Thus, the citizenship demand has increased by 30%.

The recent figures show that in the year 2013, nearly 1,28,936 persons were granted citizenships in ceremonies that were held across the country, which effectively means  an average of 10,745 applications processed every month.

With the citizenship ceremony, a new Canadian citizen will mark his/her formal entry into the civic life of Canada. Chris Alexander said that citizenship ceremony is a moving and expressive celebration, which reiterates a new citizen’s commitment to the traditions and values of Canada.

The government wants to reform the immigration system so that new citizens will more quickly become citizens of Canada.