Assessment readiness — who already publishes land values, verified
2026-07-18 · wave 14 · deepening mode · verifies the machinery claim in objections.md §4 / mechanism.md §4 — and corrects it.
The correction
Wave 4 claimed "BC Assessment and Ontario's MPAC publish land/improvement splits for millions of parcels annually." Half of that was wrong. BC is verified (wave 9 measured the Vancouver roll directly). But MPAC's assessment notices and public documentation show a single total Current Value Assessment — no published land/building split for residential property. MPAC computes land values internally (its cost-approach valuation starts from land), but does not publish them. The narrative kit's one-liner #4 repeated the error; both are corrected this wave.
The readiness map (confidence stated per row)
| Province | Land value published separately? | Confidence / basis |
|---|---|---|
| British Columbia | Yes — per-parcel land + improvements on notices and open rolls | Verified (w9: Vancouver roll aggregates measured directly) |
| Quebec | Yes — land ("valeur du terrain") and building values required on the roll by provincial regulation; municipal rolls public, province-wide open datasets exist | Documented (MAMH content regulation; Données Québec rolls dataset) |
| Ontario | No — total CVA only on notices and public materials; split computed internally, not published | Documented (MPAC public materials; absence of any split in notice guides) |
| Saskatchewan | Partial — SAMA assesses land and improvements as separate components and SAMAView exposes detailed per-parcel reports publicly; no verified bulk/open publication of the split | Documented (w22) — SAMA methods, SAMAView |
| Alberta | No published split — the cost approach values land first, but notices and the Calgary/Edmonton portals present combined totals (Ontario's pattern) | Documented (w22) — Alberta assessment guide, Edmonton assessment pages |
| Manitoba | Bulk open data: totals only (verified — the provincial ROLL_ENTRY feature service carries Total_Value and no land/building fields); each record links an MAO per-parcel report whose contents need an interactive session — unresolved |
Verified for bulk data (w23) — ROLL_ENTRY FeatureServer field list inspected directly |
| New Brunswick | Open data: totals only (verified — the GeoNB assessment dataset carries assess_val, sale_val, tax_levy; no land/building fields) |
Verified (w23) — SODA field list inspected directly |
| Nova Scotia | Unconfirmed — PVSC's cost approach values land separately; publication unverified | Partially checked (w22) — PVSC |
Why this matters more in Ontario than anywhere
Wave 8 found the median Toronto detached owner sits at break-even — the knife-edge where the land-share number is the politics. Ontario is simultaneously the province where that number is least visible: the split exists inside MPAC and is not published. Two consequences:
- A concrete, modest campaign ask exists before any settlement debate: "Ontario and Alberta: publish the land values your assessors already compute." (w22: Alberta's cost approach values land first and publishes totals only — Ontario's pattern.) Zero fiscal cost, pure transparency, and its own justification independent of Groundshare (BC and Quebec already do it). This is the kind of yard-sign-sized policy step a movement can win early.
- The mechanism's §4 confidence is now honest: the machinery exists everywhere (mass appraisal is universal), but published splits — the transparency the anti-corruption answer relies on — exist today in BC and Quebec, covering roughly half of Canada's population, and must be legislated or negotiated elsewhere. "Existing machinery" stands; "existing transparency" was overstated and now isn't.
- The map is now field-verified end to end (w23): every province's public data offering has been either measured (BC, QC), documented from primary materials (ON, AB, SK), or had its open-data fields inspected directly (MB, NB — both totals-only). Only NS's publication practice remains unconfirmed.
Files corrected this wave
objections.md§4: MPAC claim replaced with the verified map summary.narrative-kit.mdone-liner #4: now "BC and Quebec publish the split for every parcel today; Ontario computes it and should publish it."mechanism.md§4: transparency row updated with the readiness map reference.
Sources
- MPAC, "Reading Your Property Assessment Notice" and related public guides — total CVA presentation, no land/building split. https://www.mpac.ca/en/UnderstandingYourAssessment/ReadingYourPropertyAssessmentNotice
- MAMH (Québec), Le rôle d'évaluation foncière et son contenu — regulation requiring land and building value breakdown on the roll. https://cdn-contenu.quebec.ca/cdn-contenu/adm/min/affaires-municipales/publications/evaluation_fonciere/documentation/role_evaluation_contenu.pdf
- Données Québec, Rôles d'évaluation foncière du Québec (open dataset). https://www.donneesquebec.ca/recherche/dataset/roles-d-evaluation-fonciere-du-quebec
- City of Vancouver roll verification:
analysis/vancouver-land-share.md(w9).