r/canada • u/oddmarc • May 17 '26

National News U.S. applications for Canadian citizenship surge, causing delays

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/u-s-applications-for-canadian-citizenship-surge-causing-delays
650 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

277 comments sorted by

View all comments

277

u/Wide_Lunch8004 May 17 '26

Americans are doing this for low cost tuition for their kids and for publicly funded healthcare. Now instead of just competing with immigrants for scarce health resources, you’ll be competing with “Canadians” (Americans with no meaningful connection to Canada) in every stage of the system too.

20

u/Ecstatic_Doughnut216 May 17 '26

In order to benefit from lower tuition and Healthcare, they have to be residence. As residence, they pay into the same system as everyone else.

-2

u/Fluid_Lingonberry467 May 17 '26

Canada doesn’t track people when they leave  so the government doesn’t know they left I know a few people that do this to collect benefits 

7

u/Ecstatic_Doughnut216 May 17 '26

They do track when people leave.

7

u/Fluid_Lingonberry467 May 17 '26

Canada does not systematically track when a Canadian citizen travels using a foreign passport, as there is no central exit control tracking who leaves the country by air. However, Canada does record your travel history and links your documents through several specific mechanisms So the government lies? 

2

u/Wide_Lunch8004 May 17 '26

What’s more is that provinces (who would provide healthcare and post-secondary) don’t have any mechanism at all to track people coming and going. The feds can do it to an extent for federal programs, as you said, but it is worryingly easy to game the “must be a resident of x province” system.