CIT 0001 asks about one thing on Field 24: how you acquired Canadian citizenship. For anyone claiming citizenship by descent, the answer is always the same, regardless of how many generations back your Canadian ancestor is. You check B2: "I was born outside Canada to a Canadian parent or grandparent." That single option covers every generational depth, from a Canadian parent to a Canadian great-great-grandparent.
The form does not have separate checkboxes for grandparent, great-grandparent, or further. The specific chain gets documented through ancestry rows elsewhere in the form. Field 24 establishes the category.
Field 24: One Answer for Every Generational Depth
The disconnect that confuses applicants: if your ancestor is a great-great-grandparent, why is there no "great-great-grandparent" option?
Because Canadian citizenship law does not work by labels. Under the Citizenship Act, citizenship always passes from "parent" to child. Your grandmother is legally the "parent" who passed citizenship to your mother. Your mother is the "parent" who passed it to you. Each generation in your chain is, by legal definition, a "parent" in the transmission sense.
Field 24 establishes that your citizenship basis is descent. The generational distance gets filled in through the ancestry rows in the sections that follow.
The Rare Exception
If you were born in Canada, you select option A: "Born in Canada." That is the only other citizenship basis for the vast majority of applicants. Options for naturalization, Crown servants, and rare edge cases exist but do not apply to the citizenship-by-descent claims this article covers.
Which Relatives Appear in Your Ancestry Chain
The ancestry chain on CIT 0001 runs from you to the Canadian-born ancestor and no further. It does not include non-Canadian relatives on the other side of your family.
Your chain depends on who the Canadian ancestor is:
Parent chain (2 rows): You and your Canadian-born parent. Documents needed: your certified birth certificate and your parent's certified Canadian birth registration.
Grandparent chain (3 rows): You, your parent (born outside Canada), and your Canadian-born grandparent. Documents: your certified birth certificate, your parent's certified birth certificate, and your grandparent's certified birth registration from the relevant Canadian province.
Great-grandparent chain (4 rows): You, your parent, your grandparent (both born outside Canada), and your Canadian-born great-grandparent. Documents: certified birth certificates for you, your parent, and your grandparent, plus your great-grandparent's Canadian birth registration.
Great-great-grandparent chain (5 rows): You and four intermediate generations, all born outside Canada. Documents: certified birth certificates for every person in the chain, plus your great-great-grandparent's Canadian birth registration.
Add a marriage certificate for every name change between generations. If your grandmother was born Maria Tremblay and appears on your mother's birth certificate as Maria Johnson, the marriage certificate connecting those two identities is required in your package.
The Non-Canadian Parent Question
The form asks for some information about your second parent, the one not in the citizenship chain. You fill in their name and basic details. You do not trace their ancestry. You do not need their parents' names, and you do not need any birth certificates from that side of the family.
Your non-Canadian grandfather may appear on your mother's birth certificate, but he is not in your citizenship chain. His records are not part of your CIT 0001 package.
What Happens at Five Rows: Great-Great-Grandparent Claims
The CIT 0001 form has dedicated printed fields for chains up to four rows (great-grandparent depth). For a five-row chain tracing through a great-great-grandparent, the printed form runs out of space.
IRCC handles this with addendum pages. You create a page that mirrors the format of Section 9 (the section for grandparents born outside Canada), listing your additional ancestor's full legal name at birth, date and place of birth, and their relationship to you. This addendum page goes directly after the last printed ancestry section in your package. The Section 9 addendum guide covers the formatting in detail.
A Concrete Example
Allison from New Hampshire is claiming citizenship through her great-grandfather, born in Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1901. Her chain has four people:
- Allison (born in New Hampshire)
- Her mother (born in Massachusetts)
- Her maternal grandmother (born in Maine)
- Her maternal great-grandfather (born in New Brunswick, Canada)
Her Field 24 answer: B2, born outside Canada to a Canadian parent or grandparent.
Her document set: her own certified New Hampshire birth certificate, her mother's certified Massachusetts birth certificate, her grandmother's certified Maine birth certificate, and her great-grandfather's certified birth registration from the New Brunswick Archives. Plus: the marriage certificate connecting her grandmother to her great-grandfather if a name change occurred.
Her father's records, her maternal grandfather's records, and her great-grandmother's records are not part of her package unless they appear directly in her citizenship chain.
Before You Order Documents
Map your chain from yourself to the Canadian-born ancestor before you order a single record. Write down each person's name, birth year, and birthplace. Identify every name change. That map is your document list.
For a three-generation chain, you typically need three certified birth certificates and possibly one marriage certificate. Each additional generation adds one certified birth certificate and potentially one more marriage certificate.
MaplePass generates a personalized document checklist based on your exact chain, so you know what to order from which provincial vital statistics office before spending $20 to $70 per certified record. Check your eligibility in two minutes at getmaplepass.com.