Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig directnet.ca. NS
Answer
directnet.ca. 5 NS pdns2.registrar-servers.com.
directnet.ca. 5 NS pdns1.registrar-servers.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0