Last Friday, May 30th, Canadian Citizen and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander announced that Canada had welcomed its 100,000th new citizen of 2014. Already in 2014, Canada has sworn in more than twice the number of new citizens than the number of new citizens admitted by this time in 2013.

These new citizens, who came from over 200 different countries, were warmly welcomed to Canada at more than 1,080 citizenship ceremonies across the country. These ceremonies serve as a last step for new Canadians before they embrace their rights and responsibilities as citizens.

“Our government is making significant improvements to the citizenship program, and this high number of new citizens admitted so far demonstrates that changes are working,” said Minister Alexander. “Canadian citizenship is a pledge of mutual responsibility and a shared commitment to the values rooted in our history. Our government is proud to welcome the 100,000 new citizens who have joined the Canadian family so far in 2014, and we look forward to welcoming many more new Canadians in future citizenship ceremonies across our great nation.”

The number of new Canadians welcomed to the country is projected to increase even further, with the government’s proposed changes in Bill C-24, the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act. These changes will help to reduce wait times by streamlining the decision-making process for citizenship. The changes are expected to bring the average processing time for citizenship applicants to under 12 months. The current backlog of applications to the program is expected to decrease by 80 percent from 2015-2016.