How to Buy and Sell Bonds
Government bonds trade at auction and on a secondary market, mostly through brokers or funds rather than direct retail purchase.
New Government of Canada bonds are sold at scheduled auctions, primarily to large institutional dealers. Individual investors typically don't buy at auction directly; instead they buy either already-issued bonds on the secondary market through a brokerage, or bond mutual funds / ETFs that hold baskets of them.
Selling works the same way in reverse: a bondholder can sell on the secondary market before maturity (getting whatever the current market price is, which moves with yields), or simply hold to maturity and receive the bond's full face value back from the government.