Canadian citizenship in 5 minutes

Since 2015, I've been running the Immigrant.Today project. Every day my team and I tell you how to move to Canada and how is life here. Before you can apply for Canadian citizenship, you need to get permanent residency (or PR) in Canada. To do this, you have to choose one of the 120 immigration programs or streams that are available in Canada. Each program has its requirements for applicants: age, education, occupation, knowledge of English or French, and so on.

Getting PR

If you meet all the requirements, you have to apply for permanent residency. This is usually done online. That is, you fill out forms, where you specify information about yourself and your family, pay the fees and wait. If you apply for immigration through the Express Entry system, the fee for an adult family member at the end of 2022 is $850 CAD and $230 CAD for a child. The immigrant visa for an adult costs $515 CAD, for children it is free. You also have to pay for biometrics, which is $170 CAD per family.

The Canadian government will double-check your information and, if everything is OK, you will receive an immigrant visa in your passport. When you arrive in Canada, you will have a PR permit. You will have virtually the same rights as Canadians. You can work, study, enroll your children in school, take out loans for cars or smartphones, and, of course, mortgages will also be available to you. You only will not be able to vote and do other little things. But this is all about your life in Canada. If you want to travel to another country, even to the neighboring United States, you will need a visa.

Request for citizenship

If you have Canadian permanent residency, have paid taxes, have not committed a crime, and have been in Canada for 1,095 days in the past 5 years, you can apply for Canadian citizenship. Let me explain a little bit about 5 years and 1,095 days. Let's say you have not been out of Canada since you entered the country. So, when your stay is 3 years, that is 1095 days, you can become a Canadian citizen, and you do not need to wait 5 years. But if you often go to your home country, or travel around the world, this time is not counted for citizenship. So you have to accumulate 3 years of being in Canada.

You do not have to obtain Canadian citizenship; I know people who have been living in permanent resident status for decades, and they are OK with everything. Our family is a great example of this. Although we own a Canadian immigration company and help people move to Canada, we applied for citizenship only after 5 years of living in Canada.

Now the sad part is the citizenship application fee. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said before the election that it would be free, but had not kept his promises. So you have to pay $630 CAD for adults and $100 CAD for children under the age of 18. You also have to fill out forms, but that is a matter of technique. If you have not taken a language test at immigration, you still need it, but the requirements are easy: 4 in IELTS for speaking and 4.5 for listening comprehension. You do not need to take the language test after the age of 55.

In Canada, everything is done slowly, so after sending the documents for citizenship, you have to be patient until everything is checked. The most frustrating thing here is that some people wait for years, even longer than they had to live in Canada. Our documents were checked rather quickly. If I am not mistaken, we sent our application in February 2022, on March 30, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada confirmed the receipt of the documents, and we were invited to the test on October 20.

Preparing for the test

I want to focus on the test. It is a necessary step to obtain citizenship. You have to answer 20 questions in 30 minutes. If you get 15 correct answers — the Canadian passport is yours. Questions test your knowledge of Canadian history, famous people, how elections are held, laws are passed, the regions of Canada, and so on.

The tests used to be taken in-person, but because of the pandemic, everything is now online. I answered the questions at 1 a.m. when everyone at home was already asleep. It took me 5 minutes to get a passing score. Next, I have to take the oath of citizenship from the King of England, but that is a formality. The hardest part is the test.

To prepare for the test, you can read the official guide called "Study Guide — Discover Canada — The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship". It can be downloaded for free from the official website. Ivanna, my spouse, who works as an immigration consultant, printed out this handbook. It is a colorful pamphlet, but I have never read it. So how was I able to pass the test? I was advised by a phone app that someone had made based on this handbook.

It is very conveniently done. The 14 sections are divided into small lessons, and after each of them, you can take a test similar to the one on the citizenship exam, but only on one topic. Questions with 4 answers are shown and you have to click on the right one. You do not have to type in any words or choose multiple correct answers. And sometimes even easier, you just have to select, "True" or "False".

Surprisingly, I had fun preparing for the test. I learned a lot about Canada. I am proud to live in Canada and to be a Canadian citizen. It took me two weekends to prepare for the test. I used the application for 5 hours in total. I did not take any third-party tests, nor did I read the official book. The app is free to go through like 4 sections, then either watch the ads or pay $10 to remove the restrictions. But it is worth it. The result of the citizenship test is 19 correct answers out of 20.

Passing the test

I think you are wondering what kind of questions I got. Alas, the official manual forbids me to discuss it. If you study the tutorial or use the app, I am sure you can do it. 30 minutes for the 20-question test should be enough. Just add that you can change your answers before the final submission and mark those questions where you doubt the correct answer.

The Canadian citizenship test can only be taken on a computer with a video camera, the test is video-recorded, and no peeking is allowed. I took it on my laptop, and I managed to pass it. But after that, my hands were shaking, and I could only fall asleep at 5 a.m. I was emotional.

Let's summarize. To get Canadian citizenship you have to get permanent residency, to do this you have to pass the requirements of some immigration program. After you have lived in Canada for 3 years, you can apply for Canadian citizenship. You will need to take an online Canadian history test. It took me 5 minutes. After that, you can get a Canadian passport.

Alex Pavlenko, founder of Immigrant.Today