The boundaries of the geographic areas reflect those in effect on January 1, 2006 (the geographic reference date for the 2006 Census of Canada).
Cartographic boundary files are created by integrating Canada’s external shoreline with the selected source boundary layer from the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). The boundaries extending into water bodies are 'erased' and replaced by the shoreline and offshore islands. The hydrographic features are also from the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). Further adjustments are made, such as the feature selection and the ranking of features for scale dependent mapping.
Cartographic boundary files are available for the following standard geographic areas:
-
provinces and territories
- federal electoral districts (FEDs), 2003 Representation Order
- economic regions (ERs)
-
census divisions (CDs)
- census consolidated subdivisions (CCSs)
-
census subdivisions (CSDs)
- census metropolitan areas/census agglomerations (CMAs/CAs)
-
census tracts (CTs)
- Urban areas (UAs)
-
designated places (DPLs)
-
dissemination areas (DAs)
-
dissemination blocks (DBs)
-
forward sortation areas (FSAs).
Cartographic boundary files are available in latitude/longitude coordinates in MapInfo® (.tab), ArcInfo® (.shp), and Geography Markup Language (.gml) formats. Cartographic boundary files are not distributed with software.
Cartographic boundary files (CBFs) are intended for thematic mapping and analysis purposes. The positional accuracy does not support cadastral, surveying or engineering applications. CBFs can be used in conjunction with road network files (RNFs), since both products are derived from the same sources, and features are generalized in the same manner. The roads in RNFs provide additional geographic context when used with CBFs. CBFs can be used with Census of Population, Census of Agriculture or other Statistics Canada data. Geographic codes provide the linkage between the statistical data and geographic areas.
- (Source:
Statistics Canada 2007)
Boundary
files for census tracts, dissemination areas and the census
subdivisions are available for:
- Canada
- 10
Provinces and 3 territories
- 27
census metropolitan areas
- 19
census agglomerations with census tracts
In
2001, Cartographic Boundary Files replaced the 1996 Digital Cartographic
Files. The following enhancements are on the 2001 Census files:
- The
hydrography and boundaries are integrated into one layer,
allowing users to create thematic maps with realistic shorelines
(please see Appendix H).
- Increased
hydrographic detail is used from the National Atlas (1:1,000,000
geobase 0 hydrography) and the National Topographic Data Base
(within metropolitan areas) as reference to support the boundaries.
- Better
consistency with the roads on the Road Network Files for all
of Canada; the roads in the Road Network Files can be used
to reference all the boundaries in the Cartographic Boundary
Files
New
boundary files available in this series for the 2001 Census
are:
- Dissemination
area boundary file.
- Designated
place parts boundary file showing census subdivision components
is available with the designated places boundary file.
- Economic
Region boundary file is available with the Census Division
boundary file.
- (Source:
Statistics Canada 2002)
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- USER
GUIDES:
For
more detailed information regarding the cartographic files,
refer to the reference guides for each year : 2001, 2006.
- .
