Daniel Roberge B.Sc.A., Land Surveyor
Head of the Service de l'analyse et de l'officialisation
Ministère des Ressources naturelles du Québec
Direction générale du cadastre
5700, 4e Avenue Ouest, G312
Charlesbourg (Québec)
Canada
G1H 6R1
ABSTRACT
On May 6, 1992, the Québec government entrusted the Direction générale du cadastre at the ministère des Ressources naturelles with the mission of implementing the cadastral reform program in Québec. The program was designed to provide Québec with a comprehensive computerized cadastral map showing the province’s 3,700,000 or so private properties.
To implement such a large-scale project, the juridical, technical, methodological and financial aspects of Québec's cadastral system had to be rethought. In addition, the Direction générale introduced a spatial reference information system, and the computerized version became the official version of the cadastre. As a result, the Direction générale has been able to implement a whole series of automatic quality controls to ensure the consistency and integrity of the data, at the best possible quality/price ratio. Also, since the cadastral plan is now computerized, the Direction générale can circulate related information on the Internet.
Québec's new cadastre is the product of a combination of public and private sector expertise in the geomatics and cadastral fields. This innovative system, which forms the basis of the publication of rights, will allow Québec to enter the 21st century with a reliable, complete and global cadastral map that will be updated constantly.
THE TERRITORY
Québec has a total of 7,000,000 inhabitants living in a territory of 1,500,000 km2. The most densely populated regions are located in the southern part of the territory, along the St. Lawrence River.
THE CADASTRE IN QUÉBEC
Québec’s cadastre, inspired by the European model, is unique in North America. It shows the entire territorial parcellation, and forms the basis of the immovable real rights publication system.
Today, the rules governing the constitution of the land register, of which the cadastre and the land book form a part, are laid down in the Civil Code of Québec (see Figure 1), which replaced the Civil Code of Lower Canada on January 1, 1994. The new Code introduces a system of publication of rights based on the cadastral plan, which is updated constantly. The cadastral plan provides material support for the land book which is the juridical support for the publication of rights. All properties are designated on the plan by a number and are also represented graphically; their dimensions, area and boundaries are shown, and they are situated in relation to surrounding properties.
Figure 1
The original cadastre was produced between 1866 and 1896. In all, 1,450 plans were prepared in order to form a graphic representation showing most of the property holdings, which were also officially designated. The document was to be used subsequently to register property transactions, and the 700,000 or so properties into which Québec’s territory was parcelled out at the time were immatriculated accordingly.
Generally, governments institute cadastres for tax-related (property tax), legal (registration of real rights) or juridical (delimitation of ownership) reasons. Québec originally created its cadastre for legal reasons, and this same aspect has continued to take precedence, despite the recent reform of the Civil Code. Over the years, the cadastre has been used for other purposes, such as establishing property taxes, urban planning, managing utility networks, enforcing territorial legislation, and so on.
Our cadastre is now more than 130 years old, and our territory is parcelled out into approximately 3,700,000 properties. Yet, the cadastre has remained unchanged since the 19th century, with the 700,000 original lots still represented on the same 1,450 original plans. Subsequent parcellations, when immatriculated, were shown on 350,000 parcel plans that have never been transferred to an overall plan.
In addition, there are approximately 850,000 properties in Québec that do not have their own numbers, mainly due to the fact that some owners divided their properties without taking steps to obtain a separate lot number for each parcel. Moreover, an estimated 750,000 immatriculation anomalies are thought to exist, mainly due to the context of the period, the methods available to land surveyors, and the difficulty of ensuring that cadastral plans were consistent.
All these factors, combined with the absence of a formal process for updating the cadastre, gradually created a number of deficiencies in our cadastral system, which now provides an accurate record of only 50% of Québec’s territorial parcellation. In its present form, the cadastre therefore no longer plays its role of showing the location of the property holdings on which real immovable rights may be registered. It has become an out-of-date, incomplete tool that no longer truly reflects the division of our territory. Moreover, it does not include a global plan and it is not constantly updated.
For all these reasons, a reform of Québec’s cadastre had become essential.
THE CADASTRE REFORM PROGRAM
In May 1992, the Québec government approved the cadastral reform program, which was required to be completely self-financing. The Direction générale du cadastre at the ministère des Ressources naturelles was given responsibility for the program, whose three main objectives are as follows :
In short, following this far-reaching reform the cadastre will be composed of reliable, standardized data and will provide a complete, comprehensive picture of territorial parcellation, updated on a daily basis.
The Costs
The cost of Québec’s Cadastre Reform Program is estimated at $575 million, including nearly $345 million to be spent on cadastral renewal work by private land surveyors, $170 million on organization and operations, and nearly $60 million on the development, acquisition and maintenance of information systems.
The Québec government has created a special fund, known as the Québec cadastre reform fund, to finance the program. The fund’s revenues are directly proportional to economic activity in the real estate sector, and are derived in particular from amounts collected when cadastral operations by land surveyors are officialized, from amounts collected specifically for the reform when real estate transactions are registered at the registry office, and from the sale of cadastral products.
Performance of the Work
The Direction générale du cadastre is responsible for establishing production standards, awarding and managing contracts, controlling all deliverables and officializing cadastral renewal plans. In addition, it establishes the production schedule on the basis of anticipated revenues, taking into account the marketing forecasts published by the Bureau de la statisique du Québec.
However, the renewal work itself is carried out by the private sector. Québec’s land surveying firms have already adapted to technological change, and are using geomatics. They are therefore in a position to undertake large-scale projects and meet current quality standards, time limits and cost estimates.
Renewal work on Québec’s 3.7 million lots began in 1994-1995, and will continue until 2010-2011. At the height of the production curve, 300,000 renewed lots will be officialized every year. The curve is shown in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2
GEOMATICS AT THE SERVICE OF THE NEW CADASTRE IN QUÉBEC
Thanks to the availability of more powerful computers, the development of localized data management software and the drop in computer hardware costs, it is now possible to use geomatics applications to solve the problems inherent in processing large amounts of spatial reference data.
Hence, at the end of the current reform, Québec’s new cadastre will contain approximately four million lots, all linked together spatially. Geomatics applications are essential for optimizing the links between all these lots, which each have more than thirty descriptive (owner’s name, acquisition title, etc.) and geometric properties (segments and annotations). In fact, such applications are absolutely indispensable for managing cadastral data and improving current knowledge of Québec’s land parcelling.
The Technological Means
The implementation of a large-scale cadastre reform program requires the use of powerful information systems to process and circulate the data, plan the renewal work, manage the contracts awarded to land surveyors, control product quality and administer the financial resources from the Québec cadastre reform fund.
Given the amount of work to be done and the deadlines to be met, the development and implementation of information systems became extremely important. To achieve the objectives set, some of the systems had in fact to be available when cadastral renewal work began, in the spring of 1994.
Three information systems were therefore introduced to enable the program to begin. These are the cadastre renewal management system, the cadastre data management system, and the cadastre reform fund management system.
The Cadastre Renewal Management System
The cadastre renewal management system is used to program, award and monitor contracts. Programming and monitoring activities are based on cartographical data obtained from a variety of sources (administrative boundaries, topographical maps on different scales, cadastral compilations, etc.), and on municipal valuation rolls. The system architecture maximizes data use and provides tools to import, edit and use data for programming and monitoring work. It also allows the quality of goods delivered by land surveyors to be controlled.
A variety of administrative cartographical documents are produced from the graphic representation of programming data and information on the progress of renewal work.
The Cadastre Data Management System
This system is used to manage the computerized database which, when the reform is complete, will contain all the spatial reference data relating to the four million lots in Québec’s cadastre. The geometric composition of the data is extremely important, since it defines the shape, position and dimensions of the lots, and also establishes the cartographical record used for consultation and dissemination purposes.
The system uses geomatics applications for the following tasks, among others:
In addition, it ensures the integrity of the descriptive data relating to the lots managed by the ORACLE software package, and of the geometric data managed by the ARC/INFO software package.
Finally, in view of the need to disseminate the data, a standardized exchange mechanism has been introduced for communications between land surveyors, municipalities and the Direction générale, via the Internet e-mail system.
The Cadastre Reform Fund Management System
The cadastre reform fund management system, which uses the ORACLE financial management software package, is used basically to administer the financial resources, i.e. revenues, expenditures and the Québec cadastre reform fund budget.
The introduction of these three computer systems required a technological infrastructure composed of micro-computers, specialized servers, a relational database management system, and a localized data management system.
SPECIAL FEATURES OF QUÉBEC’S NEW CADASTRE
A Duplicated Cadastral Plan (Computerized and Written)
Québec’s new cadastre is based on new juridical stipulations, and in particular on section 21.3 of the Cadastre Act:
"21.3 Every renewal plan (¼ ) and every subsequent amendment to such a plan must be drawn up in duplicate; one copy shall be computerized and the other shall be the written version of the computerized version.
The computerized copy of the cadastral plan shall be updated regularly by compiling all the data relating to a plan and its amendments; it is deemed to be a duplicate of all the plans concerned.
Where the computerized version and the written version differ, the computerized version shall prevail.
In case of deterioration or loss of one of the versions, the other may serve to reconstitute it."
Hence, since 1996, every cadastral plan drawn for a property located in a sector where the reform has been completed has been produced in duplicate (a computerized version and a written version), and the computerized version is considered to be the original.
It was essential that the computerized version of the plan should be considered as the original in order to obtain the best possible quality / price ratio. In fact, this decision meant that a whole series of automated controls (300 verifications) could be included at the computer systems development stage to ensure that documents submitted by private contractors comply with current standards. Clearly, automatic controls are much less expensive and much more reliable than manual controls.
Updating the Cadastre
All land owners are now required to designate in the cadastre any lots resulting from a new parcellation. No right of ownership can be published in the land register unless the property in question has its own separate lot number. Moreover, when a lot is parcelled out, all the resulting sub-lots must be immatriculated at the same time. Hence, an owner who wishes to parcel out a property must ask a land surveyor in private practice to draw up a cadastral parcel plan showing the result of the parcellation. The plan must be drawn up in accordance with the standards prescribed by the Direction générale du cadastre.
The computerized and written versions of the plan drawn up by the land surveyor are sent to the Direction générale. If the plan is considered to be in conformity, it is officialized and then entered in the cadastral database during the night (see Figure 3). The following morning, the section of the overall cadastral plan covering the sector in which the cadastral operation took place is sent to the registry office and municipality concerned. In this way, Québec’s cadastre is always kept up to date.
Figure 3
Data Exchanges
The Direction générale, anxious to facilitate data exchanges with its clients, has introduced an innovative mechanism called the "Cadastral Operation Support Module", known by its French acronym MAROC. In fact, this is a fully automatic electronic mail system requiring no human intervention and enabling users, via the Internet, to obtain certain products and services available for the areas in which the cadastre has been renewed. Figure 4 shows how the MAROC module works.
Figure 4
MAROC offers a number of advantages. In particular, it can be used :
Users have access to these services night and day, from their own computers. The response time is 24 hours.
MAROC is also used to send updates of sections of the overall cadastral plan to the municipalities concerned.
CONCLUSION
In 1992, the Québec government undertook work costing in excess of half a billion dollars to renew its cadastre. When the work is complete, Québec will have an innovative cadastre that will enable it to enter the 21st century with a reliable, computerized and constantly updated cadastral map.
Québec’s new cadastre will be the product of a combination of public and private sector expertise in the geomatics and cadastral fields. In fact, the private land surveying firms entrusted with the cadastral renewal work must innovate and apply their know-how in order to produce the computerized version of the new cadastre.
In addition, the geomatics applications that have had to be developed to process such a large volume of spatial reference data (approximately 4 million lots are involved) are completely new. The firms in Québec that are involved in the work have therefore acquired a highly specialized form of expertise that can be applied in other contexts, both in Canada and abroad.
Québec’s skills and achievements in the geomatics, cadastral and territorial management fields have made it a valuable partner for countries wishing to develop their own expertise in these areas. In fact, in recent years the Direction générale has had the honour of welcoming many foreign delegations, all expressing a keen interest in Québec’s cadastral model.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Daniel Roberge has a degree from the Faculty of Forestry and Geomatics at Université Laval, and is a member of the Ordre des arpenteurs-géomètres du Québec. He has also studied Master’s level international administration at Québec’s École nationale d’administration publique.
From 1982 to 1990, he worked in the private sector, taking part in a variety of large-scale land surveying and geomatics projects. He has been employed by Québec’s ministère des Ressources naturelles since 1990, and is currently head of the Service de l’analyse et de l’officialisation at the Direction générale du cadastre. In this capacity, he has been involved in the development of the Cadastral Data Management System, and is responsible for the implementation of cadastral operations in the renewed areas.
Mr. Roberge is also responsible for welcoming foreign representatives with an interest in Québec’s cadastral model.