Government of Canada Design System (GCDS)

The GCDS theme is based on the new Government of Canada Design System (GCDS). It ensures consistent navigation and design across all sites using it. This Drupal theme uses Single Directory Components (SDCs) and includes CSS and JavaScript from the GCDS CDN. This means any updates made to the design system will automatically appear on your site as soon as they are available.

Theme Settings and Customization

You can adjust the theme settings to fit your project’s needs:

Top Navigation Menu

Choose between the Canada.ca topic menu or the Drupal main menu.

Breadcrumbs

Optional display.

Search Settings

Use either Canada.ca search or a local site search.

Footer Display

Choose between no footer, the full Government of Canada footer, or a compact version.

Footer Menu

Supports a multi-lingual, local contextual footer menu.

GCDS Version

Set to @latest by default, or lock to a specific version.

Extending GCDS

This is a base theme and is designed to be simple yet flexible, depending on your use case. Like every Drupal site, you will need to extend it by:

• Adding your own content architecture, modules, and configurations that integrate with GCDS, including compliance with TBS multilingual standards.
• We recommend creating a subtheme to keep continuous alignment and theme dependencies cleaner.
• Add the separate standalone GC-Notify Drupal module for GC email routing and SMS messaging micro services.

Demo Introduction

For further details and examples, visit GCdrupal.ca, which includes a video introduction from DrupalCamp Ottawa 2024, as well as samples for Drupal GCDS integration with AI and LLMs.

Get Involved

As always, work within Drupal.org to participate in theme level Drupal updates. Working with external Design Systems Web Components can be complicated given custom HTML elements throughout. You will need to be well versed in Drupal and front-end component based architecture to extend the GCDS theme.

The Government of Canada team values working with the people who use their products. To join in and contribute to the design system, visit the "Get Involved" page on the GCDS website.