Claim of Lien must be filed against the land

The only way to preserve the claim of lien against all of the items mentioned in s. 2(1) of the Builders Lien Act is to file a claim of lien against the lands:

 

Except as provided in section 18, a claim of lien is made by filing in the land title office a claim of lien in the prescribed form.

(Builders Lien Act, s. 15(1)).

 

The electronic form prescribed for lien claims requires a claimant to set out the PID and legal description of the land registered in the LTO against which the lien is being claimed.  There is no place on the prescribed form specifically designated to identify whose interest or which of the various types of interests listed in s. 2 of the  BLA a lien claimant is claiming against.

 

Unpatented land is land for which there is no title in the land title office. A lien can only be filed against land that is registered in the land title office:

 

[T]he Registrar of Land Titles cannot accept a lien for filing where there is no title.  It is not a discretion that he may exercise.  In other words, the Registrar of Land Titles has no power to create a title, thus no power to register liens against land that is not titled.

(Pine Valley Mining Corporation (Re), 2007 BCSC 812 at para. 17).