The type species Canardia garonnensis was first described and named by Albert Prieto-Márquez, Fabio M. Dalla Vecchia, Rodrigo Gaete and Àngel Galobart in 2013.

The name of the genus comes from “canard”, the French word for “duck”, an allusion to the fact that this animal belongs to the hadrosaurids which are also known as duck-billed dinosaurs.

Some authors consider it as a close relative of the genus Aralosaurus from Central Asia with which it would form the tribe Aralosaurini,[1] while others include it in a more derived clade, the Arenysaurini in which all lambeosaurines from Europe and North Africa are placed.

[4] The same authors have also attributed to Canardia an associated maxilla and quadrate found in marine deposits of the Marly Limestone of Gensac Formation in Larcan quarry, about twenty km west of Marignac-Laspeyres.

[3] The main feature of Canardia is the maxilla characterized by an enlarged rostrodorsal region that forms a prominent subrectangular flange that rises vertically above the rostroventral process.

The maxilla of Canardia shows at least 26 teeth positions[1] against 30 in Aralosaurus,[5] but the entire tooth row is not preserved in the French form.

In 2013, based on the similarities between the maxillae of Canardia and Aralosaurus, Prieto-Marquez and colleagues had included these two genera in a new group of basal lambeosaurines called Aralosaurini.

Unlike previous studies which divided European lambeosaurines into different lineages (Lambeosaurini, Parasaurolophini, Tsintaosaurini and Aralosaurini), the study by Longrich et al. considers all European lambeosaurines to form a monophyletic clade named Arenysaurini, which also includes the newly described North African genus.

According to Prieto-Marquez and colleagues, Canardia and the Spanish genus Pararhabdodon had as closest relatives the Asian genera Aralosaurus and Tsintaosaurus, respectively.

[1][8] Longrich and colleagues, who place Canardia and all other European lambeosaurines in the Arenysaurini clade, also suggest an Asian origin for paleogeographic reasons.

[1] The discovery later in Spain of numerous lambeosaurines remains in the highest levels of the lower Maastrichtian argues for the first hypothesis.

[4] From a paleogeographic point of view, the sites of the Marnes d’Auzas Formation were located on the west coast of the Ibero-Armorican Island (which included much of France and Spain), facing the Atlantic Gulf.

There, a coarse sandstone bed at the top of the formation, has yielded a tooth and a dentary fragment of an indeterminate hadrosaur, as well as a cervical vertebra of a giant Azhdarchid pterosaur of 9 meters wingspan.