I think you've had Dr. Alway in to talk about how that process works, so I won't repeat that.
I think the idea of the Canadian Register of Historic Places was really designed to capture exactly what you're talking about, and that in terms of federal jurisdiction the responsibility is that no federal action would negatively impact such a place. As you know, property is mostly provincially distributed, so the protection for a locally important site probably comes from a municipality, as delegated from the province. The federal part can be that the federal government commits to not allocating any funds or taking any action that would negatively impact any registered property.