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CIRA encourages small businesses to own their digital presence during Small Business Week 2021

By Delphine Avomo Evouna
Communications Specialist

OTTAWA, ON – October 18, 2021 – As CIRA celebrates the amazing Canadians who channel their ideas into action during Small Business Week 2021, it is also an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of building a strong, reliable digital platform that Canadian businesses can rely on.

Earlier this month, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp experienced a historic six-hour outage where 3.5 billion users were prevented from accessing the platform entirely. Subsequently, thousands of small businesses, creators, and influencers who rely on these platforms lost sales, marketing opportunities, and trust with their customers.

This incident has made it clear that small business owners, freelancers, creatives, and influencers cannot rely exclusively on social media for their business operations, sales leads, and marketing platforms. The only way to ensure a business is safe from these kinds of outages is to have a website they own, and control, and a domain name that reflects their brand: in Canada, it means creating a .CA domain name.

As a non-profit dedicated to helping Canadian businesses succeed online, CIRA is proud to celebrate Small Business Week and highlight the great work that Canadian entrepreneurs are doing every day.

Key Facts 

  • CIRA is a proud supporter of Canadian small businesses through programs such as Digital Main Street’s Shop HERE program and Pow Wow Pitch, which have provided vital support to entrepreneurs as they pivot to digital during the pandemic.
  • CIRA recently saw its best year of .CA domain name registrations ever, as hundreds of thousands of Canadian small businesses established or expanded their online presence
  • To celebrate Small Business Week, CIRA is also releasing Series 2 of its popular Canada Stock Photos, a fun, Canadian-themed resource for small businesses building their websites
  • CIRA is also highlighting five impactful success stories from .CA entrepreneurs this week on its website, featuring:
    • Sanglierdesbois.ca – High-tech boar farming project
    • Leviennois.ca – Local family bakery in Chicoutimi, QC
    • Pro-Sec.ca – Cleaning solutions for individuals and businesses
    • Kickmediagroup.ca – Holistic marketing solutions for a diversity of businesses
    • Createscape.ca – Custom website design and mobile-friendly services

Executive Quote

Interview opportunity

A CIRA spokesperson is available to comment or discuss the implications of the Facebook outage and why it is critical that Canadian businesses reduce their reliance on social platforms for revenue.

Additional resources

About CIRA

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) manages the .CA top-level domain on behalf of all Canadians. CIRA also develops technologies and services—such as CIRA DNS Firewall and CIRA Canadian Shield—that help support its goal of building a better online Canada. The CIRA team operates one of the fastest-growing country code top-level domains (ccTLD), a high-performance global DNS network, and one of the world’s most advanced back-end registry solutions.

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