After public consultations, the committee's recommendation was to form a private-sector, not-for-profit corporation to administer the .ca domain in Canada.

In May 2001, it opened its offices in Ottawa, Ontario and in June 2001, it held a public election for its initial twelve directors.

A year after its launch, D-Zone was protecting 800,000 users from malware, ransomware and other cyber-attacks in schools, hospitals, municipalities and small businesses across Canada.

In June 2018, CIRA announced a partnership with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, safeguarding K-12 schools by incorporating data from its Project Arachnid into its D-Zone platform.

[6] In July 2016, CIRA announced it would be offering its back-end registry service called FURY, to gTLDs and ccTLDs around the world.

[9][10] In November 2020 .ie completed the process of migrating it's backend registration platform to a customised version called Titan.

[13] CIRA has itself invited concerns and controversy by changing the make-up of its board of directors, and by removing the reference to "registration" from a clause in its letters patent, allowing it to now go beyond its original mandate by venturing into more lucrative commercial endeavours.

In his letter, he expressed his concerns about CIRA entering the business of managed DNS, while having a monopoly to operate the ccTLD .ca registry.

He proposed the registry be opened to a competitive bidding process, in order to operate it under a fixed three to five-year term.