This toolkit aims to shed light on IPCAs as an emerging legal mechanism for protecting lands and water. As this toolkit explores, the legislative means for establishing protected areas assumes traditional models of conservation, which are Crown-led and Crown-governed. This is exemplified in the 55 different pieces of legislation across Canada that provide for the establishment of protected areas, but none formally recognize nor set out the legal mechanism to establish an IPCA. This legislative lacuna has served as a bar to establishing IPCAs, as evident in Ontario, where none of the 520 provincial parks and conservation reserves are recognized as IPCAs.