Site Maps — Important disclaimers
Interim Pilot · Effective August 19, 2026
Every exhibit in a Site Maps package is an orientation aid. It shows you what public data says about a location so you know where to look and what to ask. It is not a determination, and nothing in a package should be relied on without checking it against the source of record.
1. What a package is
Site Maps collects publicly available maps, imagery and records for one Ontario address or assessment roll number and assembles them into a single package. It is the same material you could gather yourself from public sources, gathered in one step.
2. What a package is not
A package is not a survey, a legal description, a title search, a boundary determination, a valuation, a zoning or building-code compliance opinion, an environmental assessment, or professional advice of any kind. It is not an official record and it does not replace one.
3. The address match itself can be wrong
Locating a property is the first step and it can fail. A geocoded point may land on a neighbouring lot, an interpolated point may sit in the road, and a rural civic address may resolve to the wrong parcel entirely. Confirm that the outlined lot and the marked point are the property you mean before you read anything else in the package.
4. Lines are drawn from open data, not surveyed
Parcel outlines, regulated-area limits, service runs, boundaries and designation polygons are drawn from the publishing body's own digital layers. Those layers are mapping products, not surveys. They carry their own positional error, they can disagree with each other, and they can disagree with what is on the ground. Dimensions and areas shown on any exhibit are approximations derived from those layers.
5. What each kind of exhibit can and cannot tell you
| Exhibit | Read it as | Do not read it as |
|---|---|---|
| Aerial & Street View | What was visible on the capture date | Current condition — imagery and street-level captures can be several years old |
| Parcel & lot outline | The municipality's mapped lot | A surveyed boundary or a statement of title |
| Zoning | The mapped zone, and a link to the by-law | A compliance opinion — site-specific exceptions, holding provisions and amendments often do not appear on the map |
| Official plan designation | What the municipality intends for the land | What you may build today — that is zoning, and the two often differ |
| Conservation authority | A screening layer: the area the authority regulates | A permit decision, or proof that no permit is needed |
| Soils, drainage, wells, drains | Provincial mapping at its published scale | A geotechnical, hydrogeological or agricultural-capability investigation of this lot |
| Heritage register search | The result of a search of the provincial register | Confirmation that a property is or is not designated — municipal registers and listings are separate |
| Municipal services | What the municipality has mapped | Proof of servicing, capacity or connection rights; an absent line may mean unmapped, not absent |
| Municipal & growth boundaries | Jurisdiction and the mapped planning limit | The servicing limit — in some municipalities they coincide, in others they do not |
6. Missing data is not the same as absent infrastructure
Where a municipality publishes no open layer, the package prints a labelled card saying so. That card reports a gap in the published data. It is not a finding about the property. A rural lot with no services map is not thereby unserviced, and a lot with no conservation-authority layer is not thereby unregulated.
7. Currency
Each exhibit is built from the data as published on the day the package was made, and the capture date is stamped on the exhibit. A package does not update itself: it does not change when the underlying data changes, and it does not change when Site Maps improves. Re-run the address for current maps.
8. Sources and attribution
Material comes from public and licensed sources — provincial and municipal open data, OpenStreetMap, and Google among them. Each source's own licence and attribution apply, and every exhibit carries its source on the frame. Keep those notices intact if you reuse an exhibit; complying with a source's terms is your responsibility.
9. Your use, your responsibility
You use Site Maps and its outputs at your own risk. If you put an exhibit into a report, a listing, a presentation or any other work product, you are responsible for verifying it first and for what you present.
These disclaimers describe the product's limitations in plain language. The binding document is the Terms of Use & Disclaimer, which also sets out warranties, liability and governing law. Where the two differ, the Terms of Use govern.