What you can expect from this screen — and what you can't.

Groundwork Environment is a screen of public environmental records — not a determination that a site is clear, and not a substitute for an environmental site assessment, a wetland or species evaluation, or advice from a qualified person. Unlike Groundwork Heritage, coverage here varies by domain more than by province: four of five domains draw on national federal datasets covering all of Canada from day one. This page says exactly what's behind each result.

The single most important thing to know: a “not indicated” result means this screen found nothing in the records it holds — it does not mean a qualified reviewer would find nothing. For wetlands specifically, outside the jurisdictions marked Full below, there is no data behind the result at all.

At a glance

Five domains, one national floor, one real gap.

Contaminated sites, protected areas, species habitat, and hydrography each draw on a single national federal dataset. Wetlands is the exception — see the jurisdiction table below.

Domain	Coverage	Detail
Contaminated sites	Narrow	Federal Contaminated Sites Inventory — federal-custodianship / accepted-responsibility sites only, all of Canada. This is a narrow slice, not a general floor: most contamination is never federal-custodianship. Provincial/territorial registries would be needed for full coverage and are not yet held.
Protected & conserved areas	Full	Canadian Protected and Conserved Areas Database — all of Canada (national parks, provincial parks, wildlife management areas, migratory bird sanctuaries, and more).
Species & habitat	Fullcoarse grid	ECCC (terrestrial) and DFO (aquatic) Critical Habitat of Species at Risk — all of Canada, published on a grid as coarse as 100 km for sensitive species. Never a precise species location — see "Never in scope" below.
Hydrography	Fullcoarse scale	CanVec national hydrography (NRCan) — watercourses and waterbodies, all of Canada, at the coarsest CanVec scale (major rivers and lakes, not every small creek).
Wetlands	Partial	A confirmed wetland inventory (Canadian National Wetlands Inventory, or a province's own layer) is held for 8 of 13 jurisdictions; Quebec is covered by a modeled potential-presence layer instead of a confirmed one; Saskatchewan has a real permit regime but no usable inventory; Alberta, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut have no usable source at all. See the jurisdiction table below.

Wetlands, jurisdiction by jurisdiction

The one domain where coverage is uneven by place, not just by scope.

Jurisdiction	Wetland coverage	Why
British Columbia	Full	Canadian National Wetlands Inventory, ingested — BC's Water Sustainability Act defines "stream" to include a wetland, with no significance tier at all, at least as strong as the generic framing.
Manitoba	Full	Canadian National Wetlands Inventory, ingested — Manitoba's Water Rights Act grades the real permit intensity by wetland class (this dataset doesn't carry that class, so "a permit is commonly required" is the floor, not the ceiling).
New Brunswick	Full	Canadian National Wetlands Inventory, ingested — a wetland under 1 hectare and not connected to a mapped watercourse can fall outside NB's regulated definition; this dataset can't tell size/connectivity apart, so treat a hit as a starting point, not a guarantee.
Newfoundland and Labrador	Full	Canadian National Wetlands Inventory, ingested.
Nova Scotia	Full	Canadian National Wetlands Inventory, ingested — wetlands under about 100 m² are exempt outright under the Activities Designation Regulations, which this dataset can't filter for.
Prince Edward Island	Full	Canadian National Wetlands Inventory, ingested.
Yukon	Full	Canadian National Wetlands Inventory, ingested — and Yukon's Waters Act defines "waters" to include wetlands, requiring a licence for any water use or waste deposit regardless of classification, with a YESAA project assessment layered on top. This screen cites that activity-based regime alongside the mapped polygon hit, not instead of it.
Ontario	Full	Ontario's own "Wetland" layer (LIO/MNRF), evaluated wetlands only — the tier that actually carries regulatory weight under Ontario's Provincial Policy Statement.
Quebec	Modeled	Quebec's "Milieux Humides Potentiels" — a modeled potential-presence layer (highest-confidence tier only), not a confirmed inventory. A hit means a wetland characterization study is likely required, not that a wetland is confirmed present.
Saskatchewan	No inventory	No usable open wetland inventory exists. A real permit regime does: the Water Security Agency requires an Aquatic Habitat Protection Permit for water-conveyance work at any wetland or watercourse, regardless of classification — this screen surfaces that requirement directly rather than an incomplete map.
Alberta	No source	Alberta's "Merged Wetland Inventory" looked like a fit but is gated behind a signed licence agreement — the same trap as Alberta's flood mapping, not an open licence.
Northwest Territories	No inventory	No wetland layer published at all, but a real permit regime exists: the NWT Waters Act requires a water licence for activity affecting a water body — including wetlands — administered by the Mackenzie Valley or regional Land and Water Boards. This screen surfaces that requirement directly rather than an incomplete map.
Nunavut	No inventory	No wetland layer published at all, but a real permit regime exists: the Nunavut Waters and Nunavut Surface Rights Tribunal Act explicitly names wetlands within the Nunavut Water Board's licensing jurisdiction. This screen surfaces that requirement directly rather than an incomplete map.

A wetlands result outside the jurisdictions marked Full reads as “not indicated” for exactly the same reason a covered jurisdiction with no wetland nearby does — this screen cannot tell the two apart from the verdict alone. Always check this table, not just the verdict, before treating a wetlands "not indicated" as informative.

Species & habitat, jurisdiction by jurisdiction

The data behind a hit is identical everywhere — what it obligates you to do is not.

No provincial species/habitat layer is ingested anywhere yet — every species-habitat hit on this screen, in every province and territory, comes from the same federal ECCC/DFO grid described above. What differs by jurisdiction is what that hit actually means for a developer, based on each province's own species-at-risk law.

Jurisdiction	What a hit means here
Ontario	Ontario's Endangered Species Act, 2007 was replaced by the Species Conservation Act, 2025 (in force since 2026-03-30) — most activities now proceed through registration (and often a payment into the Species at Risk Conservation Fund), not a habitat-based assessment or permit. Confirm your project's registration obligation directly.
British Columbia	BC has no stand-alone endangered-species statute. Its Wildlife Habitat Areas bind only forestry/range activity on Crown land — they don't create a general habitat-permit regime for other land development. The federal protections above are the operative signal here.
Nova Scotia	Nova Scotia's habitat-designation power exists in statute but has essentially never been exercised (no designation in the ~23 years since the Act was passed) — a hit here reflects the federal floor, not an enforceable provincial habitat requirement.
Prince Edward Island	Same pattern as Nova Scotia — East Coast Environmental Law found zero species protected under PEI's Act in the 23 years it reviewed. A hit reflects the federal floor only.
Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador	The real species-at-risk assessment in these provinces runs on internal government data this screen cannot see. A "not indicated" result does not mean no risk — confirm directly with the relevant ministry regardless of what this screen shows.
Yukon	The real project-level trigger is a Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act (YESAA) assessment, not the Wildlife Act alone.
Northwest Territories	The Species at Risk (NWT) Act has unusually broad statutory scope but currently has zero implementing regulations and zero designated habitat — a hit here reflects only the federal floor in practice.
Nunavut	Nunavut has no dedicated species-at-risk statute of its own — wildlife and habitat decisions run through the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement co-management structure instead.
Quebec	No jurisdiction-specific caveat — the generic federal framing applies as written.

Never in scope, anywhere

Three things this tool will never show you, no matter where the site is.

A precise species-at-risk location. Every jurisdiction that publishes species-at-risk occurrence data deliberately generalizes it before release (grid cells, not points) to prevent the harm a precise location would cause — poaching, disturbance, habitat destruction by the curious. This screen only ever shows the same generalized potential-habitat signal the publishing agency itself released, worded as "potential habitat in the area," never as a mappable location.
A legal determination or a clearance. This is a screening of public records, not an environmental site assessment, a wetland or species evaluation, or legal advice. A "not indicated" result means nothing turned up in what this tool holds — it is never a guarantee that a qualified reviewer would find the same thing.
A surveyed setback or permit boundary. Watercourse proximity and flood-zone mapping here are screening signals at national/coarse scale, not a surveyed riparian setback or floodplain boundary — always confirm the exact figure with the relevant conservation authority, watershed board, or provincial ministry before relying on a distance.

Common questions

A few things worth confirming for yourself

Does "not indicated" mean the site is clear?: No. It means nothing in the records this tool holds was flagged. For wetlands outside the jurisdictions marked Full above, that's simply silence, not clearance — and even in a fully-covered domain, coverage can still miss provincial/territorial layers not yet ingested.
Why is contaminated-sites coverage "narrow" when everything else is "full"?: The Federal Contaminated Sites Inventory only lists sites the federal government is responsible for — a genuinely different, much smaller scope than "every contaminated site in Canada." Provincial registries (several are on the roadmap) would be needed to close that gap.
What should I do regardless of what this screen shows?: Confirm with the relevant provincial/territorial ministry of environment (and, for watercourses, Fisheries and Oceans Canada) before ground disturbance wherever this page flags narrow or partial coverage.
Will more jurisdictions or deeper layers be added?: Yes — Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan wetlands are the next planned CNWI jurisdictions, and provincial contaminated-sites registries are on the roadmap. This page is generated from the same coverage data the screening tool itself uses, so it won't drift out of sync as that grows.

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