Vehicle registration plates of Canada

In Canada, licence plates are issued by an agency of the provincial or territorial government. The spelling license is used in the U.S. for the noun and verb, while the spelling licence in Canada is for the noun and license for the verb.

Generally, the appearance of plates is frequently chosen to contain symbols, colours, or slogans associated with the issuing jurisdiction.

Often, licence plates are called registration plates (drivers are licensed, vehicles are registered), but the term "licence plate" is common in informal usage. In most licence plates, there is a small sticker, which indicates the month and year of plate renewal, that the driver sticks to the licence plates.

In some parts of Canada, special plates are issued to persons with disabilities having the International Symbol of Accessibility on them, which entitle them to special parking privileges. Some provinces issue a parking permit for people with disability to display the permit on their dashboard to park at designated spots in the parking lot (which are always closest to the shopping mall entrances). The international code for Canadian plates is "CDN".

Licence plate numbers are usually assigned in ascending order, beginning with a starting point such as AAA-001. Thus, someone familiar with the sequence can determine roughly when the licence plate was issued. The letters I, O and U are not used to avoid confusion with 1, 0 and V. After Ontario's transition to an ABCD-123 format in 1997, plates were issued in ascending order starting with AAAA-001. It took close to ten years to exhaust the supply of plate numbers with A as the first letter. In late 2006, plates with B as the first letter were assigned, and have continued from there sequentially. Plates with C as the first letter began to be issued in the middle of 2016.

Many provinces distinguish their licence plates through distinctive colour schemes and logos, which have historically been changed annually. For example, the reigning monarch's crown has appeared on every Ontario licence plate - including customized plates with no "dash", in the form of a second validation sticker - since 1937. Licence plates of the Yukon have long featured a prospector panning for gold. In the Northwest Territories and formerly in Nunavut, all licence plates are cut in the shape of a polar bear, but meet the standardized mounting guidelines.

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