Census Dissemination Areas (All Years)

Please note this data is only licensed for use by specific government agencies. The Dissemination Area Boundary Files portray the dissemination area boundaries all census years from 2006 to 2016. A dissemination area is a small area composed of one or more neighbouring blocks and is the smallest standard geographic area for which all census data are disseminated. The digital boundary file contains the boundaries of the over 54 thousand dissemination areas which combined cover all of Canada. The cartographic boundary file contains the boundaries of over 54 thousand dissemination areas. Dissemination areas 59290104 and 59290108 are not included within the cartographic boundary file because they are located entirely within coastal waters, they are therefore automatically removed during the production of the cartographic boundary file.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Last Updated October 19, 2025, 23:26 (UTC)
Created October 19, 2025, 23:26 (UTC)
Domain / Topic
Domain or topic of the dataset being cataloged.
Title
Title for the Dataset.
Census Dissemination Areas (All Years)
Description
A description of the dataset.

Please note this data is only licensed for use by specific government agencies. The Dissemination Area Boundary Files portray the dissemination area boundaries all census years from 2006 to 2016. A dissemination area is a small area composed of one or more neighbouring blocks and is the smallest standard geographic area for which all census data are disseminated. The digital boundary file contains the boundaries of the over 54 thousand dissemination areas which combined cover all of Canada. The cartographic boundary file contains the boundaries of over 54 thousand dissemination areas. Dissemination areas 59290104 and 59290108 are not included within the cartographic boundary file because they are located entirely within coastal waters, they are therefore automatically removed during the production of the cartographic boundary file.
Tags / Keywords
Keywords/tags categorizing the dataset.
Format (CSV, XLS, TXT, PDF, etc)
File format of the dataset.
Dataset Size
Dataset size in megabytes.
Metadata Identifier
Metadata identifier – can be used as the unique identifier for catalogue entry
Published Date
Published date of the dataset.
2014-12-16
Time Period Data Span (start date)
Start date of the data in the dataset.
Time Period Data Span (end date)
End date of time data in the dataset.
GeoSpatial Area Data Span
A spatial region or named place the dataset covers.
Field Value
Access category
Type of access granted for the dataset (open, closed, service, etc).
License
License used to access the dataset.
Open Government Licence - Canada
Limits on use
Limits on use of data.
Location
Location of the dataset.
https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/census-dissemination-areas-all-years-
Data Service
Data service for accessing a dataset.
Owner
Owner of the dataset.
BC Stats
Contact Point
Who to contact regarding access?
BC Stats
Contact Point Email
The email to contact regarding access?
[email protected]
Publisher
Publisher of the dataset.
Publisher Email
Email of the publisher.
Author
Author of the dataset.
Author Email
Email of the author.
Accessed At
Date the data and metadata was accessed.
Field Value
Identifier
Unique identifier for the dataset.
Language
Language(s) of the dataset
Link to dataset description
A URL to an external document describing the dataset.
Persistent Identifier
Data is identified by a persistent identifier.
Globally Unique Identifier
Data is identified by a persistent and globally unique identifier.
Contains data about individuals
Does the data hold data about individuals?
Contains data about identifiable individuals
Does the data hold identifiable data about individual?
Contains Indigenous Data
Does the data hold data about Indigenous communities?
Portal Type
Platform type of the source portal.
Field Value
Version
Version of the datatset
None
Source
Source of the dataset.
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/geo/index-eng.cfm
Version notes
Version notes about the dataset.
Is version of another dataset
Link to dataset that it is a version of.
Other versions
Link to datasets that are versions of it.
Provenance Text
Provenance Text of the data.
The geographic area boundaries, names, codes, and the relationships among the various geographic levels are found on Statistics Canada?s Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). These data for administrative areas are updated using information from provincial and territorial sources. These data for statistical areas are updated using the results of the previous census, as well as input from users.
Provenance URL
Provenance URL of the data.
Temporal resolution
Describes how granular the date/time data in the dataset is.
GeoSpatial resolution in meters
Describes how granular (in meters) geospatial data is in the dataset.
GeoSpatial resolution (in regions)
Describes how granular (in regions) geospatial data is in the dataset.
Field Value
Indigenous Community Permission
Who holds the Indigenous Community Permission. Who to contact regarding access to a dataset that has data about Indigenous communities.
Community Permission
Community permission (who gave permission).
The Indigenous communities the dataset is about
Indigenous communities from which data is derived.
Field Value
Number of data rows
If tabular dataset, total number of rows.
Number of data columns
If tabular dataset, total number of unique columns.
Number of data cells
If tabular dataset, total number of cells with data.
Number of data relations
If RDF dataset, total number of triples.
Number of entities
If RDF dataset, total number of entities.
Number of data properties
If RDF dataset, total number of unique properties used by the triples.
Data quality
Describes the quality of the data in the dataset.
Metric for data quality
A metric used to measure the quality of the data, such as missing values or invalid formats.

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