Date and time notation in Canada

Canada has signed up to use the ISO 8601 format for date and time representation through national standard CSA Z234.5:1989.

Date

The Canadian Standards Association has adopted the ISO 8601 yyyy-MM-dd (e.g., 2009-12-31) date format; however, the dd/MM/(yy)yy (e.g., 31/12/(20)09) date format is still widely known, especially in Quebec because it is the order used when a date is written in French (e.g., trente et un décembre deux mille neuf). The MM/dd/(yy)yy (e.g., 12/31/(20)09) date format is also known because of the influences from the United States. In more casual use, the three different date formats can cause ambiguity. For example, this all-numeric date format "01/02/03" can be 3 different expanded date forms. It can be European "01 February 2003", American "January 02, 2003", and some might even think it could be ISO 8601 for "3 February 2001", even though the ISO standard always uses four digits for the year. Today, people are more exposed to the American date format and the ISO 8601 date format due to the updated technology. The ISO 8601 date format is an easy date format to understand because it always starts from the biggest number first and then goes down to the smallest number last, year(2009)-month(12)-day(31), and the format always includes the date with a 4-digit year, so it is free from ambiguity.

In Canada, all three date formats are used, yyyy-MM-dd or yyyy MMMM dd (big-endian), dd/MM/(yy)yy or dd MMMM yyyy (little-endian) and MM/dd/(yy)yy or MMMM dd, yyyy (middle-endian). All short date formats should display leading zeros for any numbers below 10. The separator is usually a hyphen or a slash. Expanded date formats may display leading zeros (e.g., 09 December 2009) or may not (e.g., 9 December 2009) for numbers below 10. They may also include the weekday name. The British expanded date form would look like "Thursday, 31 December 2009" and the American expanded date form would look like "Thursday, December 31, 2009". There may also be abbreviations for words in any date format (e.g., 2009-Dec-31, Thu). Weekday name and month abbreviations are usually the first three or four letters of the word (Weekday abbreviated names: Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat—Months: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec). Calendars mostly show Sunday as the first day of the week. In addition, most provincial governments and the Federal government of Canada use little endian i.e. 31 December 2010.

Time

See also: Time in Canada

In Canada, similar to the United States, the 12-hour clock is used in ordinary life by the English-speaking population. French speakers, however, often use the 24-hour clock. The 24-hour clock is also routinely used in health care settings, such as hospitals, as well as by airlines, environmental services, railways, bus lines, ferry services, and the military.