.ca Domain Lifecycle Explained

[mogtnomr]

Thank you for your interest in .CA. Note that you have no obligation to renew a
domain name with your current Registrar. You can still transfer a domain name
even if it has not been renewed.

I just heard from a registrar that they (as well as most if not all registrars) will registrar-lock your domain so that you cannot transfer it out once it hits expiry and goes into auto-renew-grace. This makes it sound like the registrars are the bad guys, but apparently they have good reason to do it. As you probably know, your registrar gets billed by CIRA for the auto-renewal, regardless if you've paid for a renewal or not. CIRA will credit the registrar if the domain gets deleted within 45 days... However, CIRA does _not_ credit the registrar if the domain gets transferred away. It kinda makes sense because CIRA doesn't know if the registrar received payment from the domain owner or not, so they simply don't credit those cases. A registrar's only protection is to lock the domain so you renew it first. If a domain gets transferred away while expired, truly the registrar gets screwed, and that is exactly why registrars are locking expired domains.

Apparently CIRA is aware of the issue and are trying to figure out how to fix the mess.... So once again, its not the registrar that is the bad guy here, its CIRA.