DCHP-2

land titles office Land Titles Office DCHP-2 (October 2016)

• n. — Western Canada & Territories, Administration

  a government office overseeing property ownership via land title documents.

  Type: 2. Preservation — Land titles office appears to have been first used in Australia, where the Torrens system of land registration was first implemented. Various Commonwealth provinces and territories adopted the Torrens system shortly after its widespread success in Australasia, with Vancouver Island being the first to adopt it outside that region in 1860 (Taylor 2008: 31-34). The Torrens system is based on title rather than deed. Indeed, in the Atlantic provinces and in northern Ontario, where a deed-based land registry system is in place (see Canadian Encyclopedia reference), similar government agencies are often called land registries or land registry offices, e.g. Prince Edward Island Land Registry Office, or Fredericton Land Registry. By contrast, in BC, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, northern Ontario, the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, where a Torrens system is in place, the agencies are generally denominated land titles offices. Internet domain searches indicate that the term is most prevalent in Australia, followed by Canada (see Chart 1), making it Canadian in a North American context. Regional Canadian searches demonstrate the higher prevalence of the term in those provinces and territories where a Torrens system is used (see Chart 2).
  See also COD-2, s.v. "land titles office", which is marked "Cdn & Austral.".