About the cadastral renewal

The cadastral register was first created in 1860, and had become incomplete and imperfect over the years, leading the Government to launch a renewal process in 1994.

Before the renewal work began, roughly 850,000 properties had not been directly registered on the cadastre, and 750,000 lots that had been registered contained anomalies that affected their dimensions or surface area.

The cadastral renewal work is nearly complete. The register will be complete and fully automated for the benefit of property owners. 

The cadastre is a public register containing representations of properties to which land rights apply, in the form of a plan. In other words, it illustrates the content of the ownership deeds entered in the land register. The State helps to protect land rights by maintaining these registers.

In the cadastre, your property is identified by a lot number, and the plan shows:

• its graphic representation (the shape of the lot, its dimensions and its surface area);
• its position in relation to neighbouring properties.

In addition to its primary function, the register, prior to the entry of land rights:

• is used by municipalities to establish property taxes and manage their territories;
• is used by public utility companies prior to the installation of their networks (gas, electricity, water, telephone);
• serves as the basis for the application of certain laws, including those relating to land use planning and urban development, cultural property and the protection of agricultural land.

The aims of the cadastral renewal process are to:

• correct anomalies in existing cadastral plans;
• incorporate lots that are correctly represented on existing cadastral plans, with no changes;
• identify and represent all properties that are not registered separately;
• simplify the representation by combining parcels forming a single property under a single lot number;
• producing an electronic version of Québec’s cadastral plan.

The renewal of the Québec cadastre is coming to an end. Of the 3.8 million lots spread across Québec, approximately 3,000 remain to be finalized in the coming months. 

If you own a property when cadastral renewal work takes place in your sector, you will receive notices from the Government.

To check whether the cadastral renewal process has already taken place in your sector, use the search tool to obtain an overview of the work done (in French). You will be asked to enter certain information and select certain criteria (lot, municipality, RCM, administrative region) first.

The government has renewed the Québec cadastre over the past three decades. To report on the steps taken in this major project and to report on the benefits and spinoffs, a review of the Québec Cadastre Reform Program (PDF 2.85 Mb) (in French only) was produced. The abstract (PDF 461 Kb) of this review is also available in English.

Land surveyors are the only experts qualified to carry out work on the cadastre. The Government has awarded contracts to land surveyors in private practice, to carry out cadastral renewal work throughout Québec. These contracts were awarded via public calls for bids.

The land surveyors were tasked with producing a cadastral renewal plan, sector by sector, after completing various steps over a period of approximately two years.

By collaborating with the Government and the land surveyors, you are helping to ensure that your property is represented accurately on the new cadastral plan, and you will also avoid delays or other inconveniences when you sell it.

Before work begins in your sector, you will be asked to provide a copy of all private documents relating to your property.

During the work, you will be invited to a meeting with the land surveying firm that produced the plans. At the meeting, you will have an opportunity to comment on the new cadastral plan on which your property is shown.