The Canadian Internet Registration Authority is the group that's responsible for running the .ca domain, that's the top-level domain assigned to Canada. I've covered the establishment and activities of CIRA since it took over administration of the domain a few years ago. The domain used to be run by a guy named John Demco, a technician in the computer science department at the University of British Columbia. Not exactly Canada's version of Jon Postel but close enough. It was Postel, incidentally, who actually assigned administration of the .ca domain to Demco, who continues to sit on the board of CIRA.
Jon Postel, of course, was — and I'll get some argument over this broad generalization because he had and often sought help — the guy who ran the broader Internet's top-level domain naming system (DNS) of .com, .edu, and .gov for years. What he did was taken over by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Jon died before ICANN really got going but, those who knew him, say he would have been less than impressed with what ICANN morphed into.
Its critics say it has got involved in way too many fights over politics and technical standards that it was never supposed to and, as a result, has weakened itself and made the Internet itself less robust.
CIRA does not have the scope ICANN does: It does, after all, only look after Canada's little corner of the Internet. What it does have that ICANN sometimes seems to lack is a sense of modesty about its own importance. It has largely confined itself to running an efficient (if a little expensive) domain naming system for .ca and it's got 403,000 domains and counting!
Every year, CIRA elects a new board of directors and that time is upon us again.. Not anyone can run and not just anyone can vote. By and large, you have to be the registered owner of a .ca domain (or its representative) to vote. I've never liked that system. I think some seats — we could argue over majority or not — on the board should be elected directly by domain name owners but I think some seats should also be elected by all Canadian Internet users. Students and academics, at least, I would think, would be interested in some of the issues CIRA deals with.
And if I wanted to change things that way, I suppose I could run for the board and do my darndest.
The currenct board of directors though is, by and large, a pretty good group of smart and reasonable people.