Treaty Boundaries on the DLS Grid

Five Canadian Numbered Treaties cover most of the Prairie agricultural belt and adjacent industrial corridors:

• Treaty 4 (1874) — southern Saskatchewan + parts of southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Alberta
• Treaty 6 (1876) — central Alberta, central Saskatchewan, edges of Manitoba
• Treaty 7 (1877) — southern Alberta (Calgary, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat)
• Treaty 8 (1899) — northern Alberta, northeastern BC, southern NWT, part of northern Saskatchewan
• Treaty 10 (1906) — northeastern Saskatchewan plus part of Manitoba

Township Canada renders all five as polygons at zoom 0 (so the boundaries are visible at the continental scale where most consultation planning happens) on the same map as wells, pipelines, and parcels.

How the layer surfaces in the product

Two ways:

As a togglable map layer. Energy Bundle subscribers (Business + $100 add-on) can turn the treaty boundaries on or off in the data catalog. Polygons are coloured per treaty with labels for each treaty name.

As a flag on the parcel report. Every parcel report at /parcel/[lld] checks the parcel centroid against the treaty boundaries layer. If the parcel sits within a treaty area, the "Indigenous consultation hazard" card surfaces the treaty name(s) and a reminder copy: Reference only — verify duty-to-consult directly with the affected Nation before any activity.

What this layer represents and what it doesn't

The treaty boundaries layer reflects the polygons published by Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) via the Government of Canada's ArcGIS REST service. Five polygons total, covering an area roughly the size of Western Europe.

What this layer is:

• An indicator of which Numbered Treaty applies to a given location
• A useful first-pass flag during early-stage project siting

What this layer is not:

• A consultation list. The duty to consult arises from constitutional jurisprudence; the layer doesn't tell you which Nation to contact.
• A substitute for direct outreach. Treaty geography is one input among many — modern treaty areas, reserve lands, traditional territory claims, and active consultation negotiations all overlap and the treaty polygons don't capture that.
• Legal advice. Cleaning up your project siting against the treaty map doesn't discharge the duty to consult.

The catalog UI and the parcel report copy reflect this — the language is intentionally "consultation reference" rather than "consultation cleared."

Why "consultation hazard" on a parcel report

For an operator scoping an Alberta CCS injection site, an Alberta wellsite for a proposed reactivation, or a renewable energy project on Prairie farmland, knowing the treaty geography is a Day-One planning input. Drop a candidate parcel into the report, see the treaty flag, route to the appropriate consultation team before further siting work.

The flag is intentionally surfaced for everyone (not gated behind the Energy Bundle) because the treaty geography itself is public information published by the federal government. The full Energy Bundle treaty overlay is the map view; the parcel-level flag is the free first-touch.

What's coming

A broader Indigenous consultation overlay is spec'd in docs/data-layers/indigenous-consultation.md. It would add:

• Reserve and modern settlement lands (CIRNAC)
• Provincial consultation databases (AB Aboriginal Consultation Office, BC Consultative Areas Database)
• Disclaimer copy reviewed with Indigenous Relations and legal

That layer is pending source selection and legal sign-off on disclaimer copy. Until it ships, the Treaty Boundaries layer is what's available.

Related

• CCS Pore Space Tenure layer reference
• Indigenous Consultation Overlay spec
• Township Canada for CCS Developers
• AER CCS Pore Space Tenure — Quarter Section Identification