A big citizenship step for LGBTQ2+ Families in Canada

In a significant ruling upheld by the Superior Court of Quebec, non-biological but legal Canadian parents will be granted permission to pass down the Canadian citizenship to their foreign-born children. Through this ruling, a change has been initiated in the definition of “parent” under the Citizenship Act. Now, the IRCC acknowledges equal rights for biological and legal parents. Before this mandate, as per the Citizenship Act, a foreign-born child was granted Canadian citizenship only if the biological parent was a Canadian citizen. So, this law did not allow the children of LGBTQ2+ couples to enjoy the rights of a Canadian citizen at birth. This change is a major breakthrough for LGBTQ2+ families and for couples who have children from different modern methods due to fertility issues. This endeavor was initiated by Laurence Caron and Elsje van der Ven, a same-sex couple, who could not get citizenship status for their son, Benjamin because his biological mother, Elsje van der Ven, was a Dutch citizen. Benjamin was denied Canadian citizenship even when his legal mother, Laurence Caron, is a Canadian. Thus, the couple went to the court to trigger a change for all those couples who use other human assistance methods for reproduction and are not biological parents. As per the latest definition of parent in the Citizenship law, non-biological, legal parents will be viewed as equal to biological parents. Marco Mendicino, the Immigration Minister of Canada, believes that this is a “positive declaration” made by the Superior Court of Quebec.