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. Self-assessing cities checked (w30): Saskatoon's open-data parcels carry geometry/zoning only, Regina's portal has no per-parcel values Documented (w22, w30) — SAMA methods, SAMAView; Saskatoon OD/LandSurface field list inspected directly
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 Bulk open data: totals only (verified — PVSC's datazONE "Assessed Value and Taxable Assessed Value History" dataset bt58-qu28 carries assessed_value and taxable_assessed_value, no land/building fields; the residential/commercial characteristics datasets carry no values either). Owners get fuller detail behind the notice's AAN+PIN login Verified for bulk data (w27) — datazONE field list inspected directly; PVSC data access
Prince Edward Island No published split — the province assesses and presents two totals (market value and capped taxable value — a cap distinction, not land vs building); land records sit in the paid GeoLinc Plus service; no open assessment dataset found Documented (w27) — PEI property assessment; CBC on the two values
Newfoundland & Labrador Partial — MAA's cost approach "begins by establishing the value of the land," and a public per-property assessment search exists (multi-search access is a paid tier); no open bulk data; whether the public search displays the land/building split is unconfirmed from public documentation. St. John's self-assesses; no open assessment data found Documented (w27) — MAA assessment process, MAA assessment search

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. The map now covers all ten provinces (w27): every province's public offering has been either measured (BC, QC), documented from primary materials (ON, AB, SK, PEI, NL), or had its open-data fields inspected directly (MB, NB, NS — all three totals-only). The w23 gap closed this wave: Nova Scotia runs a genuine open-data portal (PVSC's datazONE), and it publishes totals only — the Maritime pattern is uniform. The national tally: published per-parcel splits exist in BC and Quebec; Saskatchewan shows you yours on request; the other seven provinces publish totals only — while every one of them values land separately somewhere inside the machine. The campaign ask generalizes cleanly: publish the land values your assessors already compute.

Files corrected this wave

Sources

  1. MPAC, "Reading Your Property Assessment Notice" and related public guides — total CVA presentation, no land/building split. https://www.mpac.ca/en/UnderstandingYourAssessment/ReadingYourPropertyAssessmentNotice
  2. 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
  3. Données Québec, Rôles d'évaluation foncière du Québec (open dataset). https://www.donneesquebec.ca/recherche/dataset/roles-d-evaluation-fonciere-du-quebec
  4. City of Vancouver roll verification: analysis/vancouver-land-share.md (w9).
  5. PVSC datazONE (Nova Scotia open data portal) — "Assessed Value and Taxable Assessed Value History" (bt58-qu28), "Residential Dwelling Characteristics" (a859-xvcs): field lists inspected via the Socrata views API 2026-07-19; value fields are assessed_value/taxable_assessed_value only. https://www.thedatazone.ca/ · https://www.pvsc.ca/data-disclosure
  6. PEI, "Property Assessment and Property Tax" (provincial assessment; market + capped-taxable presentation) and CBC's explainer on the two values (2022). https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/en/topic/property-assessment-and-property-tax · https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-property-tax-assessed-values-1.6460935
  7. Municipal Assessment Agency (NL), "The Assessment Process" (cost approach begins with land value) and "Assessment Search" (public single-property search; paid multi-search tier). https://maa.ca/assessments/the-assessment-process/ · https://maa.ca/assessments/assessment-search/

Groundshare — a proposal in open development. Every number traces to a cited public source with its retrieval date; corrections are published, not erased. Rebuilt 2026-08-04 from the repo's research files.