The Canadian Rally Championship was inaugurated in 1957 when Leslie Chelminski and Les Stanley, a crew from Montreal, shared the very first national rally title driving a factory-prepared Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia. In those early years the championship was based on navigational, or time-speed-distance (TSD), rallying, with events sometimes numbering as many as twenty in a single season. The most prominent events from the TSD era included the Canadian Winter Rally and the Shell 4000. Champions from that period included Art Dempsey, Bill Silvera, and Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame inductees John Bird, Paul S. Manson, and Bruce D. Simpson.
The sport gradually shifted toward the European stage rally format, in which competitors race at maximum speed across special stages on roads closed to the public, in contrast to TSD rallying where competitors must adhere to the rules of open public roads. In 1973 the Canadian Rally Championship transitioned fully to stage rallies, a change that remains in effect today. The 2007 season marked the championship's 50th anniversary, a milestone that underlined its exceptional continuity in Canadian motorsport.
The CRC follows a two-class format: 2-Wheel Drive and 4/All-Wheel Drive, ensuring that competitors in fundamentally different machinery can compete within their own categories for championship honours. The calendar typically spans eight events across Canada, held on a variety of surfaces including gravel, snow, and ice, reflecting the country's climatic range.
Vehicle categories recognised within the championship include Open 4WD, Prepared 4WD, Open 2WD, and Prepared 2WD. Points allocation follows the CRC regulations, with drivers earning one point for starting a rally and one additional point for finishing it, supplemented by position-based points for competitive placings. Co-driver standings are awarded on the same points basis.
A Novice Cup is awarded to eligible new drivers who have competed in fewer than six performance rallies before the start of the season, with points distributed in descending order from nine for first to one for sixth. A Ladies Cup recognises female competitors using the same points system as the Novice category, designed to foster inclusion and highlight women's contributions to Canadian rallying.
A Manufacturers' Championship also runs alongside the individual titles, determined by the best-placed entry for each manufacturer at every event.
The Rally of the Tall Pines, held in November each year since the shift to stage format in 1973, has been the premier event of the Canadian Rally Championship throughout the modern era. Contested on forest roads in Ontario, it is widely regarded as the most prestigious round on the CRC calendar.
The Canadian Rally Championship occupies a unique position in domestic motorsport as the nation's oldest continuously running national series. Its evolution from navigational TSD events in the 1950s and 1960s to the modern stage rally format mirrors the global development of rallying as a discipline. The championship maintains a comprehensive lifetime standings table — the Canadian Performance Rally Lifetime Standings — recognising the top competitors since 1973 based on points earned in the first six overall positions across all CRC performance rallies. Fourteen drivers and ten co-drivers had attained Grand Master status, denoting more than 2,000 lifetime points, by the 2024 season.