.ca

.ca

Introduced	May 14, 1987(1987-05-14)
TLDtype	Country code top-level domain
Status	Active
Registry	Canadian Internet Registration Authority
Sponsor	Government of Canada
Intended use	Entities connected withCanada
Actual use	Popular in Canada, where.ca is advantageous when selling to a Canadian audience in Canadian dollars.
Registered domains	3,329,987 (2022-12-11)
Registration restrictions	There are Canadian presence requirements for registrants
Structure	Provincially registered companies originally had to register at third level under province code, but now anybody may register at second level
Documents	Official CIRA documents
Dispute policies	CIRA Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (CDRP)
DNSSEC	Yes
Registry website	CIRA

.cais theInternetcountry code top-level domain(ccTLD) forCanada.Thedomain name registrythat operates it is theCanadian Internet Registration Authority(CIRA).

Registrants can register domains at the second level (e.g.,example.ca). Third-level registrations in one of the geographic third-level domains defined by the registry (e.g.example.ab.ca) were discontinued on October 12, 2010,but existing third-level domain names continue to be supported.

Canadian Presence Requirements

Registrants of.ca domains must meet the Canadian Presence Requirementsas defined by the registry. Examples of valid entities include:

• aCanadian citizenorpermanent residentof theage of majority
• a legally recognized Canadian organization
• anInuit,First Nation,Métisor other people indigenous to Canada
• an Indian Band as defined in theIndian Actof Canada
• a foreign resident of Canada that holds a registered Canadian trademark
• an executor, administrator or other legal representative of a person or organization that meets the requirements
• a division of the government
• themonarch of Canada

History

See also:Canadian Internet Registration Authority

The domain name was originally allocated byJon Postel,operator ofInternet Assigned Numbers Authority(IANA), to John Demco of theUniversity of British Columbia(UBC) in 1987. The first.ca domain was registered by theUniversity of Prince Edward Islandin January 1988.

In 1997, at the Canadian annual Internet conference inHalifax,Nova Scotia,the Canadian Internet community, with a view to liberalize registration procedures and substantially improve turnaround times, decided to undertake reform of the.ca Registry.

TheCanadian Internet Registration Authority(CIRA) is a non-profit Canadian corporation that is responsible for operating the.ca Internet country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) today. It assumed operation of the.ca ccTLD on December 1, 2000, from UBC. On April 15, 2008, CIRA registered its one millionth.ca Internet domain name.

Any.ca registration has to be ordered via a certifiedregistrar.

Third-level (provincial) and fourth-level (municipal) domains

See also:ISO 3166-2:CA

UBC's registry operations once favoured fourth-level names (such as city.toronto.on.ca) for purely local entities or third-level names for entities operating solely within one province. Nationally incorporated companies could have a.cadomain, while provincially incorporated companies required the letters of their province, like.mb.ca.Only an entity with presence in two or more provinces was typically registered directly under.ca; this complex structure (and the long delays in getting.ca registration) caused many Canadian entities to favour the,.organd.netregistrations, despite the then-higher cost.

Currently, any of the above listed parties can register a domain with a name of their choosing followed directly by.ca.CIRA stopped accepting new registrations for third-level domains on October 12, 2010,citing complexity and the low number of new third domain registration as the reason for the change. As a result, the following domains at the third-level are no longer available for registration:

Domain	Province/Territory
.ab.ca	Alberta
.bc.ca	British Columbia
.mb.ca	Manitoba
.nb.ca	New Brunswick
.nf.ca	Newfoundland
.nl.ca	Newfoundland and Labrador
.ns.ca	Nova Scotia
.nt.ca	Northwest Territories
.nu.ca	Nunavut
.on.ca	Ontario
.pe.ca	Prince Edward Island
.qc.ca	Quebec
.sk.ca	Saskatchewan
.yk.ca	Yukon

The second-level domain name '.gc.ca' (Government of Canada) is commonly mistaken as one of the regional domains under which CIRA will allow Government of Canada registrations. gc.ca is actually a standard domain like all other.ca domain names. CIRA does not register domain names under.gc.ca directly.

The.mil.ca second-level domain name is also a standard domain and is registered to theDepartment of National Defence(DND). The.mil.ca suffix is used internally by DND on itsintranet,the Defence Information Network (DIN) or Defence Wide Area Network (DWAN), to distinguish intranet-only websites.

Naming restrictions

Internationalized domain names(IDN) were introduced in January 2013 with a limited selection of characters (é, ë, ê, è, â, à, æ, ô, œ, ù, û, ü, ç, î, ï, ÿ) to allowFrench languagetext withdiacritics.Names which differ only in diacritical accents (such asmetro.caand métro.ca) must have the same owner and same registrar.Domain names that begin with the four charactersxn--are otherwise not available for registration. Length must be 2-63 characters, including the xn-- prefixencodingfor internationalised domain names.

Names which match the name of an existing generic three-letter top level domain (such as.ca) or the Canadian top level country code (.ca) are reserved and therefore not available for new registrations. Certain expletives are not accepted as names. Municipal names of individual cities and localities within Canada are also reserved nationwide, along with village.ca, hamlet.ca, town.ca, city.ca, ville.ca and the names of Canadian provinces.

There are a handful of existing.ca registered names as short as two characters in length, but these tend to be rare as two-letter combinations matching any existingcountry-code TLDswere reserved in the past. Exceptions were typically names registered before the restriction was introduced, such as theCanadian Governor Generalatgg.ca.

Names which exist at any of the levels (.ca, an individual province or territory, or an individual city) are blocked in their availability elsewhere in the.ca hierarchy. Registration, if it can be done at all, requires manual intervention by the prospective registrar as the permission of all existing registrant(s) must be obtained by CIRA.For instance, if the province ofNew Brunswickwere to want to register "gouv.nb.ca",CIRA's normal automatedWHOISand registration tools would simply return the following error:

The domain name provided conflicts with at least one other registered domain name (e.g. xyz.ca conflicts with xyz.on.ca). Registering this domain name requires permission from the Registrant(s) that already holds the domain name(s): gouv.on.ca, gouv.pe.ca, gouv.qc.ca. Contact CIRA for more information.

SinceOntario,Prince Edward IslandandQuebecalready use "gouv" on their provincial second-level domains for the French-language versions of their government websites, this domain is unavailable through the normal registration process. However, with the agreement of these three parties New Brunswick would indeed be able to register and use gouv.nb.ca.

Existing third-level domain registrants looking to obtain the corresponding second-level domain are normally advised to use the same initial registrar for both names.

Expired domains

After a thirty-day redemption period, intended to provide the original registrant one final chance to reclaim a suspended name, the expired names are assigned a to-be-released (TBR) status. These names are made available through a weekly auction process, in which lists of available names are posted onlineand advance bids are placed by prospective registrants through the various.ca registrars.

Domains which receive no bids are then released and made openly available for new registrations.

See also

• .quebec
• Internet in Canada
• Canadian Internet Registration Authority

External links

• IANA.ca whois information
• CIRA - The Canadian Internet Registration Authority
• List of.ca certified registrars