Managing citizenship certificates
This section contains policy, procedures and guidance used by IRCC staff. It is posted on the department’s website as a courtesy to stakeholders.
As part of IRCC's legislative mandate to issue citizenship certificates, the Department records any change in their status and maintains updated an inventory of these documents and any associated information. Diligent record keeping also serves to prevent the unlawful use of certificates and ultimately increases program integrity by providing a method of real time validation of citizenship certificate information.
The citizenship certificate's record is updated whenever its status has been changed. This includes cases where the certificate has been reported as lost, stolen, destroyed, replaced, surrendered, or cancelled. All changes are noted and appended to the certificate's record in the Global Case Management System (GCMS). The Department also updates the record of certificate when certificates are found and returned to IRCC, when a person has ceased to be a citizen, has had their certificate recalled, as well as when IRCC learns of the death of a person to whom a certificate was issued.
Handling incoming requests
- Updating status of certificates
- Replacing certificates
- Certificates containing administrative errors (after the ceremony results are entered or a certificate is mailed by the Case Processing Centre in Sydney [CPC-S])
- Certificates that are lost, stolen, or not delivered
- Certificates in possession of a third party
- Cancelling certificates
- When a person wants to keep a certificate as a memento