Canadian Mineral Claim & Tenure Registry Guide
Each Canadian province and territory runs its own mineral tenure registry, and they differ in what they publish. Exploration Maps supports direct claim search for British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland & Labrador and Yukon. All seven can be mapped. Tenure Monitor — saved claim groups with good-to-date reminders and change detection — currently covers British Columbia only. Every jurisdiction's official registry remains the authority for ownership, status and boundaries.
What each registry is, and what we support
The table below reflects what the application actually does today. Where a column says no, it means the capability does not exist yet — not that it is coming.
Manitoba: the public disposition layer does not publish a holder name, so only claim-number lookup is offered. That is a limit of the published data rather than a decision on our side, and it is the reason the Manitoba guide leads with the claim number.
| Jurisdiction | Official registry | Search by owner | Search by claim number | Map in Exploration Maps | Tenure Monitor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| British Columbia | Mineral Titles Online (MTO) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Ontario | Mining Lands Administration System (MLAS) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not yet |
| Quebec | GESTIM | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not yet |
| Saskatchewan | Mineral Administration Registry Saskatchewan (MARS) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not yet |
| Manitoba | Manitoba mineral dispositions (iMaQs) | No — see note | Yes | Yes | Not yet |
| Newfoundland & Labrador | Mineral Rights / GeoAtlas | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not yet |
| Yukon | Yukon quartz and placer claims | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not yet |
The jurisdiction guides
Where a province has enough of its own quirks to be worth its own walkthrough, it has one:
- British Columbia — owner, tenure number and map-sheet search, plus the strongest tenure tooling on the site
- Ontario — MLAS cell claims and how holder names are recorded
- Quebec — GESTIM claims (claims désignés sur carte) and titleholder search
- Saskatchewan — MARS dispositions
- Manitoba — claim-number lookup, and why owner search is unavailable
- Newfoundland & Labrador — licences rather than claims, and what that changes
Why the registries differ so much
Mineral tenure is administered provincially and territorially in Canada, so there is no national claim registry and no common data model. The practical consequences show up quickly:
This is why the guides are per-jurisdiction rather than one generic article. A single "how to search Canadian mining claims" page would have to be vague enough to be useless.
- The unit of tenure differs — claims, cells, licences, dispositions and leases are not interchangeable terms
- Holder or owner information is published in some jurisdictions and withheld in others
- Expiry works differently: BC's good-to-date is not the same instrument as an anniversary date elsewhere
- Boundary precision and coordinate reference systems vary by source
- Update frequency for published datasets is often undocumented
What to verify, wherever you are working
Published datasets are copies. They can lag the registry, omit recent transactions, or carry generalized boundaries. That is manageable as long as you know which questions require the authoritative source — and all of the expensive ones do.
Tenure monitoring, and why it is BC-first
Tenure Monitor tracks good-to-dates, sends reminders before them, and detects changes in the published record. It covers British Columbia only at present.
The reason is that BC publishes a good-to-date as a structured field on every title, which is what makes a reliable countdown possible. Other jurisdictions express maintenance obligations differently, and building a reminder system on a date we had to infer would be building a reminder system that is sometimes wrong about a deadline — which is worse than not having one. See the BC good-to-date guide.