Road signs in Canada may conform to the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Canada (MUTCDC) by the Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) for use by Canadian jurisdictions. Although it serves a similar role to the MUTCD from the US Federal Highway Administration, it has been independently developed and has a number of key differences with its American counterpart, most notably the inclusion of bilingual (English/French) signage for jurisdictions such as New Brunswick with significant francophone populations, as well as a heavier reliance on symbols rather than text legends.
In Canada most of the road signs are written in English or French.
"All federal government-only signs and signs for highway use must be bilingual regardless of whether mandated by local, provincial or territorial language requirements," except for some places.
In Nunavut the four official languages (including Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun, also French and English) must be used. On the Sea to Sky Highway (BC 99) places are labelled in Squamish names e.g. "" (Vancouver).
Under federal jurisdiction, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages has ruled the word stop to be an exclusively English term when used for stop signs. Accordingly, to comply with the Official Languages Act, only bilingual stop signs with both English and French (i.e.: stop and ) are used on federally-regulated sites such as airports and entry points run by Canada Customs.
Canada is the only country which uses instead of stop in the French-speaking world.
In Quebec, although all road signs must be in French legally, modern stop signs can be found with either or . Both words are considered valid French words by the (OQLF), a stance held by the agency since 1927. In practice, however, it can be empirically observed (for instance, with Google Street View) that predominates in French-speaking areas (i.e., most of the geographic extent of Quebec), while stop can be found in majority English-speaking areas such as Montreal's West Island suburbs. At the time of the debates surrounding the adoption of the Charter of the French Language ("Bill 101") in 1977, the usage of stop on the older dual-word signs was considered to be English and therefore controversial; some signs were occasionally vandalised with red spray paint to turn the word stop into "101".
The following are samples of Canadian road signs:
Alphanumeric reference IDs from the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Canada are included, as well as some presumably from other sources.
British Columbia maintains its own equivalent standard to the Canadian and US MUTCD, the "Manual of Standard Traffic Signs and Pavement Markings".
Most signs in Alberta are defined by the Alberta traffic control standards, which is based on the MUTCDC.
Most signs in Manitoba follow the MUTCDC.
The Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO) also has historically used its own MUTCD which bore many similarities to the TAC MUTCDC. However, as of approximately 2000, MTO has been developing the Ontario Traffic Manual (OTM), a series of smaller volumes each covering different aspects of traffic control (e.g., sign design principles).
The Ontario Traffic Manual Committee categorises all road signs into two main categories: highway and non-highway sign types. Signs are then sub-categorised into two additional groups: urban and rural.
The following are samples of Quebec road signs. A notable difference between Quebec road signs and those of the rest of Canada is Quebec's use of a white chevron on a red background to mark road alignment around a curve, whereas the remainder of the country employs a black chevron on a yellow background.
These signs have been superseded but can still be seen in some places.