Date and time notation in Canada

Date and time notation in Canada combines conventions from the United Kingdom, conventions from the United States, and conventions from France, often creating confusion. The Government of Canada specifies the ISO 8601 format for all-numeric dates (YYYY-MM-DD; for example, 2026-09-23). It recommends writing the time using the 24-hour clock (01:06) for maximum clarity in both Canadian English and Canadian French, but also allows the 12-hour clock (1:06 a.m.) in English.

Date

When writing the full date, English speakers vacillate between the forms inherited from the United Kingdom (day first, "7 January") and United States (month first, "January 7"), depending on the region and context. French speakers consistently write the date with the day first ("le 7 janvier") like the rest of the French-speaking world. The government endorses all these forms when using words, but recommends only the ISO format for all-numeric dates to avoid error.

Dates in English

The date can be written either with the day or the month first in Canadian English, optionally with the day of the week. For example, the seventh day of January 2016 can be written as:

Thursday, 7 January 2016 or Thursday, January 7, 2016

7 January 2016 or January 7, 2016

2016-01-07

Formal letters, academic papers, and reports often prefer the day-month-year sequence. Even in the United States, where the month-day-year sequence is even more prevalent, the Chicago Manual of Style recommends the day-month-year format for material that requires many full dates, since it does not require commas and has wider international recognition. Writing the date in this form is also useful for bilingual comprehension, as it matches the French sequence of writing the date.