The Canadian domain landscape is changing. The .ca registry, once
run by a co-operative under the University of British Columbia, has been transitioned
to a new, non-profit corporation called the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA).
New rules required holders of existing .ca to renew those names and allow anyone
living or doing business in Canada to register an unlimited number of .ca domain names.
Any names that were not renewed by the deadline of February 1st, 2001 were
released back into the available name space. This accounted for approximately 41,000
names, many of which were high profile but neglected by their previous registrant.
Registrations
On 11/08/00, CIRA began accepting new .ca registrations, under much
less stringent registration restrictions. Previously, .ca registrants
were only allowed one registration per individual/organization,
and there were further rules restricting access to the .ca space
to federally incorporated organizations.
Tucows resellers are now accepting registration requests for new .ca domain names.
Essentially, the only restrictions for new .ca registrations are
that the registrant must be any of the following (extracted from
CIRA Registration Rules v2.1):