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About .CA Domain Names

Last Revised: 17/02/2017

Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is the registry for .ca domain names.

CIRA periodically audits domain names to ensure they conform to eligibility requirements. If CIRA cannot confirm the new registrant's eligibility status, CIRA might request information from you to prove your eligibility. You must send them the requested information within the specified time frame to avoid deactivation of your .ca domain names.

Who can register .ca domains?

See Registering a .CA domain for details about who can register .ca domains and how.

Transfer Exceptions

CIRA restricts domains from transfer for the first 65 days of registration.

If all variants are not transferred, the transfer will fail.

  • When a domain transfer takes place, it must be initiated for every variant (IDN) of that .ca domain name.
  • On the Pending Transfers page in the Domain Manager, your administrative contact's email address displays as nocontactsfound@secureserver.net because we cannot access your Whois contact information.
  • We normally send the transaction IDs to the administrative contact's email address. For .ca transfers, we send them to the email address on file in your account with us.
  • Transfers normally take five to seven days from the time you authorize them. However, a .ca transfer goes through immediately after you enter the transaction ID, security code, and authorization code, and then click Finish.

If the domain name expired, you have 30 days from the expiration date to transfer it to us. To transfer a .ca domain name to us within that 30-day expiration grace period, contact our Support department for assistance.

Private and Protected Registration

CIRA automatically applies its own private registration to new .ca domain names. Specifically, CIRA limits the personal information that displays in the Whois database for the following legal types:

  • Canadian citizens
  • Permanent residents
  • Legal representatives
  • Aboriginal persons

If you registered a .ca domain name as an individual registrant, you can contact our support department to cancel or re-add private registration.

Renewals

CIRA automatically renews .ca domain names on their expiration dates. If you do not pay for the renewal within 42days of the expiration date, you can attempt to recover your .ca domain name, and there might be a fee to do so. See Recovering Expired Domain Names for instructions.