18-Geom-A6 Cadastral Studies · May 2014
Nivaar worked solution (AI-drafted; not reviewed by a licensed engineer)
National Exams — May 2014 — 04-Geom-A6 Cadastral Studies. Closed-book; no calculator permitted. Format: five questions of equal value (25% each); any four constitute a complete paper, and all answers are required in essay format. All five questions are solved in full below. Legal and land-registration content is framed in the Canadian context (common-law standard of care; provincial Torrens / registry systems).
Reference texts: Survey Law in Canada (Canadian Council of Land Surveyors / Carswell, 1989); Brown, Robillard & Wilson, Brown's Boundary Control and Legal Principles (7th ed., Wiley, 2017); G. Larsson, Land Registration and Cadastral Systems (Longman Scientific & Technical, 1991); ISO 19152 Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) and FIG Statement on the Cadastre; H. Demsetz, "Toward a Theory of Property Rights," Am. Econ. Rev. 57 (1967); G. Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science 162 (1968).
Question text not reproduced: the examination questions are © Engineers and Geoscientists BC. Open the official past paper (linked at the top of this page) to read the question, then follow the worked solution below.
The honest answer is "it depends on which survey the surveyor is performing" — sometimes yes, sometimes emphatically no. The distinction turns on whether the surveyor is creating a boundary for the first time (an original survey) or re-establishing a boundary that already exists in law (a retracement survey).
The "no" case — retracement. By far the most common cadastral work is retracement, and here the surveyor does not make the boundary. The boundary was created earlier, by the original survey and the conveyance that flowed from it, and it exists as a matter of law whether or not it can presently be seen on the ground. The retracing surveyor's task is to follow the footsteps of the original surveyor — to find the best evidence of where the original boundary was located and to re-mark it, not to invent a new line. The maxim is that the retracement surveyor "locates, but does not create." Example: a surveyor asked to re-establish the common boundary between two long-established residential lots searches out the original iron bars planted when the subdivision plan was registered, finds two of them, and re-runs the line between them. The line already existed; the surveyor merely recovered and reported it. If the surveyor's measurements disagree with the plan dimensions, the found original monuments still govern — proof that the surveyor is not free to "make" the line.
The "yes" case — the original survey. When land is subdivided for the first time, the surveyor genuinely does make the boundaries. In laying out a new plan of subdivision, the surveyor establishes lines that never existed before and monuments them on the ground; upon registration of the plan and the first conveyances, those lines become the legal boundaries of the new parcels. A cardinal doctrine of boundary law reinforces this creative role: in an original survey the monuments as actually placed by the original surveyor control — the corners are where the surveyor set them, even if the recorded measurements between them contain error. The physical acts of the original surveyor are the boundary. Example: a surveyor retained by a developer to subdivide a large parcel into forty building lots computes, stakes, and monuments the new lot corners and road allowances and files the plan; those planted corners define the parcels for all time. Here the surveyor has, in the fullest sense, "made" the boundaries.
So the correct nuanced answer is that surveyors make boundaries when they perform original (first-instance) surveys, but they only find and re-establish boundaries — they must not make them anew — when they retrace existing ones.
