How does .CA manage IDNs?

In 2012, CIRA introduced support for the full range of French characters in .CA domain names: é, ë, ê, è, â, à, æ, ô, œ, ù, û, ü, ç, î, ï, ÿ. When a .CA is registered, all variations of a domain name with these accented characters (what we call the “administrative bundle”) are reserved for the registrant and cannot be registered by anyone else.

Although these domain names are reserved for the registrant, they are not active – that is they do not automatically resolve. The registrant must register them with a registrar that offers this service. Each domain name you wish to use must be registered individually, with the same registrar. Each of these registered names will have its own lifecycle.

To use an example, there are 18 variants in the administrative bundle for www.cira.ca:

For .QUEBEC, when a registrant seeks a second level domain name with a diacritic (IDN), he will get it's ASCII fallback second level domain name at the same time. And over and above a same .CA bundle policy gets in place, enforcing the same entity policy.

I cannot speak for .ca or CIRA, but for .QUEBEC, when the .QUÉBEC will be delegated, the same entity bundgling policy will be extended at the second level for all, including for the already delegated .quebec. with or without diacritic.

This is very conservative, one could say, but it gives a security space for the Brand, the registrants and the users.

This was done, at the Registry level, and the Registry Operator level.

We understand that the registries want to keep an upper hand of what policy should be put in place in their own turf at the second level. We respect that, and we did not propose that the way it is manage here in Canada is a ones fits all. I remember during the IDN PDP 2, that this was discussed for variants and the decision regarding the restriction at the second level was left to the registry, and not a policy in the PDP.

I hopes it helps to understand that café.quebec, cafe.quebec, café.québec, cafe.quebec and all the others câfé, cäfé, càfé, cafe, cafê, cafè, cafë, càfë, etc etc would be all be part of one bundle, one registrant, one registrar, one Registry operator, : or the same entity

So no confusion here. Similarity yes but for the same entity.

Best

Claude

Le 22 mai 2026 à 2 h 32, Tapani Tarvainen via Gnso-latin-diacritics <gnso-latin-diacritics@icann.org> a écrit :

Thinking of the test.domain vs tést.domain scenario, I find myself
concluding that enforcing the same entity principle on 2nd level
domains is not viable.

Confusion potential is real, but as it already exists for extant TLDs,
ASCII as well as IDN ones, and we cannot do anything about those, can
or should we enforce stricter rules for our case?

Same entity requirement on 2nd level could also have some undesirable
side-effects. What would happen if cafe.quebec and café.quebec were
already extant with different registrants when .québec is applied for?

Should that block .québec application? Or should the policy have
some kind of grandfather clause?

I don't see why café.quebec and cafe.quebec would be less likely to
cause confusion than cafe.québec and café.québec. If anything the
latter should be safer simply because people using .québec are more
likely to pay attention to accents.

Likewise, sakki.fi, säkki.fi and šakki.fi (all extant domains with
different registrants) are unlikely to confuse Finnish speakers,
and others are less likely to use .fi domains.

I guess we could require applicants to document their policy in this
regard, perhaps including that they must alert registrants to the
issue, but I would not insist on strict same entity principle on 2nd
level.

I remain, however, open to persuasion. :-)

--
Tapani Tarvainen
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