Survey Technician alumnus Peter Sullivan helping enable sustainable development on Canada Lands

Dec. 1, 2016

For more than 30 years, Peter Sullivan has worked to implement boundary survey programs and land survey systems in the private sector and in government.

In the past 11 years, Peter has led many initiatives, including a program to analyze geomatics and Indigenous property rights and the modernization of survey systems for property boundaries in the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, more than 2,600 First Nations reserves, and Canada’s offshore area and national parks. His office also works with the United States to maintain the world’s longest continuous international boundary.

Peter serves as Canada’s Commissioner on the International Boundary Commission and offers his counsel as a statutory member of the Association of Canada Lands Surveyors and Chair of the Canadian Council on Geomatics.

He regularly shares his expertise at conferences in Canada, the U.S. and internationally, where he discusses geographic and land information management. More recently, Peter helped move the Government of Canada’s land surveying system online to provide more efficient land transactions and better access to current and historical land survey documents dating back to 1871.

Peter is proud of the role his department has taken in managing geomatics programs and says that land surveying is extremely important to Canada for many reasons, but especially because it has such a large geographic landmass.

He also believes that settling land claims helps support economic development and that boundary determination through survey areas is an important part of the process.

“Land surveying in general is a crucial part of governance structures because it supports the definition of the extent of rights to land. Investment and development in land requires the certainty that legal surveys provide,” says Peter. “Land surveying defines the extent of property and ownership and is a critical component of a secure property rights system that is fundamental to a market economy.”

Peter was nominated for a prestigious 2016 Colleges Ontario Premier’s Awards in the Technology category.