Whereas there are documents and covenants attached to parcels of land throughout the province that are rooted in racism and discrimination; And whereas the cost to remove racist documents and covenants from land titles is born by the property owners: Therefore be it resolved be it resolved that the UBCM request that the Province instruct the Land Titles Office to eliminate any charges to landowners wishing to remove these offensive clauses and restrictions from their titles, and further request the Land Titles Office conduct an audit of land titles and systematically remove racist and discriminatory covenants and documents.
Ministry of Forests Discriminating covenants are not enforceable. If a landowner has questions about discriminating covenants or would like to initiate the process to have an endorsement made on an existing land title record noting that the covenant is void and of no effect, the landowner should contact the Registrar of Land Titles at the LTSA. This service is free. When contacted by a landowner, the Registrar will make an endorsement by the covenant indicating that it has been cancelled pursuant to section 222 of the Land Title Act. Because the Registrar is prohibited under the Land Title Act from erasing or rendering illegible the original words on a record, the words are struck through so that it is more apparent on the face of a record that the discriminating language is void. The LTSA has made sustained efforts to amend records over the years; however, with millions of both physical and digital documents the effort to identify documents with discriminating clauses is ongoing. Most recently, the LTSA has engaged with Simon Fraser University to explore other techniques which assist in identifying occurrences of these covenants. The Ministry of Forests continues to work with the LTSA on this issue and is monitoring the progress on the digital scanning project.
Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia The Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia LTSA, strongly condemns discrimination in any form. The LTSA has an active project that uses advanced technology to help find remaining unaltered discriminatory covenants. The project uses optical character recognition OCR and artificial intelligence to search digitized records for a list of discriminatory words. While OCR and artificial intelligence AI are helpful tools, digitizing records and finding and cancelling discriminatory covenants remains a time-intensive process. When discriminatory covenants are found, the Registrar of Land Titles will amend the records by striking through the words, to comprehensively reflect that the discriminatory covenants are no longer valid. The Registrar does not have the authority to erase original words of a land title document, or make them illegible. Property owners or others who find discriminatory covenants can contact the Registrar to request it be struck through, without cost. Any other remedy would require provincial direction and potentially amendments to the Land Title Act If there are questions about legislative amendments, please direct them to the Ministry of Forests, as the Ministry responsible for the Land Title Act.