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.
A "road" as a legal entity — a public highway over which the public has a right of passage — can come into existence in several ways. The four most common are:
1. Original road allowance (statutory, by the original survey). When the original township surveys were laid out under the Surveyor General's instructions, road allowances were surveyed and set aside between and along the concessions and lots. These allowances became public highways by statute (they are Crown-originated and vested in the municipality). They are the oldest and most widespread source of rural roads in Ontario.
2. Registered plan of subdivision (dedication on the plan). When an owner subdivides land and registers a plan of subdivision, the streets shown on that plan are dedicated to public use by the act of registration and, on acceptance by the municipality, become public highways. This is the ordinary way roads are created in modern urban development.
3. Common-law dedication and acceptance. A road may be created where a landowner, by words or conduct, dedicates a strip to the public as a highway and the public accepts it — typically shown by the public actually using the way and by the municipality assuming or maintaining it. Both the intention to dedicate and the acceptance must be established.
4. Statutory establishment or expropriation by a public authority. A municipality or the province may create (or widen) a highway directly by by-law or order, or by expropriating the necessary land under statutory authority and paying compensation. The road exists by force of the enabling legislation and the registered instrument, independent of any voluntary dedication.
Roads may correspondingly be closed by the reverse mechanisms — a stopping-up by-law, an order, or a plan — whereupon the land, subject to the statute, may revert to abutting owners; but the four routes above are how the legal road is brought into being. Historically Ontario also recognised a fifth, statutory route: under the former Municipal Act, roads on which public money had been expended for opening them, or on which statute labour had usually been performed, were public highways — and s. 26 of the Municipal Act, 2001 preserves as highways all highways that existed on December 31, 2002.
