Cloud Regions in Canada: AWS, Google Cloud and Azure
Regions, time zones and data protection law for cloud teams in Canada.
Canada has in-country regions from all three providers: AWS in Canada Central and Calgary, Google Cloud in Montreal and Toronto, and Azure in Toronto and Quebec. A team that wants its data and its compute on Canadian soil can do it on any of the three.
Cloud regions in Canada
| Provider | Region | Location |
|---|---|---|
| AWS | ca-central-1 | not stated by AWS |
| AWS | ca-west-1 | Calgary |
| Google Cloud | northamerica-northeast1 | Montreal |
| Google Cloud | northamerica-northeast2 | Toronto |
| Azure | canadacentral | Toronto |
| Azure | canadaeast | Quebec |
AWS ca-west-1 (Calgary) is an opt-in region: it has to be enabled on the account before resources can be created there, and tools that scan your account only see it once it is enabled.
Scheduling on local time
Canada spans six time zones, from Newfoundland (America/St_Johns, half an hour off its neighbours) to British Columbia (America/Vancouver). A company with engineers in St. John’s and Vancouver has a four-and-a-half hour spread in its working day, which is exactly the gap that makes one shared stop time wasteful for one office and disruptive for the other.
Time zones: America/Toronto, America/Vancouver, America/Edmonton, America/Winnipeg, America/Halifax, America/St_Johns. Currency: CAD.
Data protection law
The federal private-sector law is the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). The regions above are the in-country options for teams that need Canadian hosting.
Source: Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), S.C. 2000, c. 5.
Nearby countries
United States. For every country, see cloud regions by country.
Questions we get a lot.
If yours isn't here, email us and we'll answer directly.
Is there a cloud region in Western Canada?
Yes. AWS ca-west-1 is in Calgary. Google Cloud and Azure Canadian regions are in Ontario and Quebec.
Does Montreal use its own time zone?
No. In the IANA database Montreal uses America/Toronto, so a schedule for a Montreal team should use that zone.