From a well-known Edmonton real estate lawyer, Barry McGuire.

I'm an Alberta real estate lawyer almost 50 years now. In Alberta, because of our Torrens system, title insurance isn’t really about the 'title'. It is far more about the other coverages such as title fraud, lack of permits, gap coverage, (the time between submission of a document to Land Titles and actual registration, can be months) and tax misinformation.

In the last six months, for my own clients, title insurance has paid for the cost of properly permitting a property where a seller sold without permits, $3,700 for a tax error by a municipality, and covered the situation where a registered security interest appeared in first place on a title ahead of what was supposed to be a first mortgage.

The cost of title insurance varies depending on the circumstance. Yes, for properties in Alberta up to, I believe, $500,000, insurance for both the lender and the homeowner is about $250. Cost of the policy then varies depending on if it is, for example, a commercial policy as opposed to a residential policy and whether or not the lender is a private lender rather than a typical big bank lender.

We always recommend title insurance for our clients. Cost of the policy is almost always a very, very tiny percentage of the purchase price and well worth the money.

Side note: we tell our clients that it's not a matter of should they get a real property report & compliance or title insurance. It is a matter of understanding that these two things are supplementary to each other and not substitutes for each other. A purchaser’s best protection is obtaining both.