The position of the department is that the legislation is compliant. However, the former legislation had a concept called “responsible parent”. What it meant was that citizenship was derived from the Canadian father if the child was born abroad, provided that the Canadian father was married, but there was no access to citizenship if the Canadian father was not married to his partner. Conversely, citizenship would derive from a Canadian mother if the child was born abroad but not if she was married. There were individuals who were born abroad to a Canadian parent in either of those scenarios who did not access citizenship. It was not limited to the descendants of women.
