The Canadian Geotechnical Journal features articles, notes, reviews, and discussions related to new developments in geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering, and applied sciences. The topics of papers written by researchers and engineers/scientists active in industry include soil and rock mechanics, material properties and fundamental behaviour, site characterization, foundations, excavations, tunnels, dams and embankments, slopes, landslides, geological and rock engineering, ground improvement, hydrogeology and contaminant hydrogeology, geochemistry, waste management, geosynthetics, offshore engineering, ice, frozen ground and northern engineering, risk and reliability applications, and physical and numerical modelling.

Contributions that have practical relevance are preferred, including case records. Purely theoretical contributions are not generally published unless they are on a topic of special interest (like unsaturated soil mechanics or cold regions geotechnics) or they have direct practical value.