Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig aliant.ca. NS
Answer
aliant.ca. 4 NS dns-on01.aliant.net.
aliant.ca. 4 NS dns-ns00.aliant.net.
aliant.ca. 4 NS dns-nb01.aliant.net.
aliant.ca. 4 NS dns-qc02.aliant.net.
aliant.ca. 4 NS dns-nb00.aliant.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
dns-nb00.aliant.net. 4 A 198.164.30.2
dns-nb01.aliant.net. 4 A 198.164.4.2
dns-ns00.aliant.net. 4 A 142.177.1.2
dns-on01.aliant.net. 4 A 207.164.234.8
dns-qc02.aliant.net. 4 A 207.236.176.13
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0