Illegal to redact wording in land title documents
This issue was on the radar of West Vancouver Coun. Marcus Wong in January 2020, when he introduced a motion that staff work with the LTSA to determine the “process, resources and time” required to strike racist language from land title documents. Although the motion passed unanimously, action has been delayed by the pandemic, Wong said.
West Vancouver does not have the resources required to pull, review and update the thousands of land titles in the district, so an immediate solution to this dilemma has “yet to be identified,” said district spokeswoman Donna Powers. A staff report that seeks further direction from council will be finished by the end of May, she added.
Wong, who has spoken to the two local MLAs about the provincial government also playing a role in this issue, is confident a “team effort” involving various agencies will bring about change.
“I've grown up with these covenants hanging over my head in West Vancouver,” said Wong, who owns a British Properties home that comes with the same prejudiced clauses. “Being somebody of Chinese descent, born and raised in Canada, it's still very traumatic for me to think that where I live, not even generation ago, I was not allowed to live.”
In addition to the tony British Properties, the racist covenants have been found in other North Shore areas, including Caulfield, Glen Eagles, and Edgemont Village, Wong said. Councillors in New Westminster and Vancouver have raised similar concerns, he added.
The LTSA says these covenants were put on some properties between the 1900s and 1950s, but legislative changes in 1978 made them unenforceable. The law says land title documents cannot be redacted, but homeowners can email the LTSA to ask for lines to be struck through the racist language; the agency receives less than five of these requests annually, said spokeswoman Janice Fraser.
The LTSA is also trying to identify discriminating clauses in the millions of paper and digital documents it oversees. It is working with Simon Fraser University to explore new techniques to identify these covenants, to better understand what can be achieved with computers and what still must be done manually, Fraser said.
British Pacific Properties, a private company that oversees the development of 4,000 acres it purchased from the district in 1931, agrees the covenants “have no place in our society” and supports the work being done to remove them, said President Geoff Croll.
A motion by Vancouver Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung in February 2020 asked city hall staff to explore options to address racist land title documents. This week, Kirby-Yung said she was disappointed her motion didn't produce the action she had hoped, and noted this issue is still important given the extreme increase in anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic.
“I think that it's an even more sensitive time right now,” said Kirby-Yung. “It's become pretty clear that this is not a thing of the past, that racism is alive and well, unfortunately.”