18-Geom-B5 Survey Law · May 2014
Nivaar worked solution (AI-drafted; not reviewed by a licensed engineer)
National Exams — May 2014 — 04-Geom-B5 Survey Law. Three hours; CLOSED BOOK, NO CALCULATOR. Twelve questions constitute a complete paper (the first twelve as they appear are marked); most answers require sentence-and-paragraph format. All twelve questions are solved in full below. Content is framed in the Canadian common-law and Ontario land-registration context named by the source.
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); Ontario Land Surveyor educational materials and the Association of Ontario Land Surveyors (AOLS) Survey Review; the Land Titles Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. L.5, the Registry Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. R.20, the Surveys Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. S.30, and the Condominium Act, 1998, S.O. 1998, c. 19; Re Ellenborough Park, [1956] Ch. 131 (C.A.).
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.
Real property law in Canada draws on several distinct but interlocking sources. Because s. 92(13) of the Constitution Act, 1867 assigns "Property and Civil Rights" to the provinces, the substance of land law is provincial, and the sources below are read subject to that constitutional division of powers.
1. The Constitution. The Constitution Act, 1867 is the starting point: it allocates jurisdiction over property and civil rights to the provinces (s. 92(13)) while reserving certain matters (navigation, "Indians and lands reserved for the Indians," federal Crown lands) to Parliament. It sets the boundaries within which all other property law operates.
2. Statute law. Provincial legislation is the dominant working source of modern land law — in Ontario the Land Titles Act, the Registry Act, the Surveys Act, the Boundaries Act, the Planning Act, the Condominium Act, and the Conveyancing and Law of Property Act. Statutes create the registration systems, define surveyors' authority, and increasingly displace or codify older common-law rules.
3. Common law. The body of judge-made law received from England and developed through Canadian courts governs estates, tenures, conveyancing at common law, boundaries, and the doctrines of retracement. It operates on the principle of stare decisis (binding precedent), so decided cases are themselves a source of law.
4. Equity. The parallel body of equitable rules (trusts, equitable interests, mortgages by equity of redemption, estoppel, specific performance) supplements and, where they conflict, prevails over the common law. It recognises interests — such as a beneficiary's interest under a trust — that the common law would not.
5. The Civil Code (Quebec). Quebec is a civil-law jurisdiction: real property there is governed by the Civil Code of Québec rather than by received English common law, so "Canadian" real property law is in truth bijural.
Two further roots are worth naming: the Royal prerogative and original Crown grant (all private title in the common-law provinces derives ultimately from a Crown grant, the root of title), and Aboriginal and treaty rights, now constitutionally protected under s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which qualify underlying title.
