Land Data for Whom? Analyzing the Politics of Land Data Management in Canada

Land inequality is increasingly recognized as a critical global issue, yet the dynamics and implications of this inequality remain underexplored in specific contexts. This paper examines Canada’s land registry systems, which are essential for understanding land ownership trends but are largely inaccessible for public-interest research due to privatization and commercialization. Canada’s registries, governed provincially and territorially, primarily operate under the Torrens system—a colonial framework designed to facilitate settler ownership and economic accumulation. This system abstracts land from its historical and ecological contexts, reinforcing settler property regimes that marginalize Indigenous sovereignty and prioritize market interests. Through interviews and document analysis focusing on Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, as well as reflections on the authors’ own experiences, this paper investigates the privatization and commodification of land data in Canada. It addresses three core questions: How does privatization impact access to and use of land data? Who benefits from these configurations? And how do these structures constrain understanding of land ownership trends, particularly in agriculture? Our analysis of the politics of Canada’s land data management systems reveals that they favor commercial interests, making data a valuable commodity while obstructing equitable access for researchers and the public. This restriction hampers the ability to address critical issues such as farmland ownership, control, and financialization. By situating these findings within the broader literature on colonialism and neoliberalism, this paper underscores the urgent need for reform in land data management and access. The study advances understanding of how current land registry systems perpetuate land inequities, hindering efforts toward social and economic equity, Indigenous sovereignty, and public knowledge of land tenure dynamics.