nicker I'm a petroleum landman in Calgary, and can answer whatever questions you need.
Mineral rights are typically owned by the province, in Alberta's case about 90%. In B.C.'s case even more. Land ownership in Canada is very different from the U.S. because of this, and there are many rules and regulations that are unique to each province.
Sounds like the job you do is similar to what we call Surface land. In the U.S. most land owners hold title to the minerals and by extension the right to win, take and remove the resources, which they'll lease to landmen working for oil companies.
We still have surface guys that head to the field and acquire the lands, roads, pipelines, access to the surface to drill, and handle a host of other tasks like surveying, community relations, etc.
Some companies are different in how they handle land, but almost all have mineral landmen, but may outsource the surface work to broker shops who have the resources and people in-house who have developed relationships with farmers, etc. These companies may be a good start for a guy like you to check out, if you need a bunch of names of brokers, I can give them to you.
Otherwise, the commercial side and mineral rights are the job of the mineral landmen and the U.S. equivalents would likely be something like "commercial" or "business development".
Feel free to PM any questions or write on here and I'll answer them.
edit: I should add that there are some people that own title to their minerals, likely having settled on their land (or their ancestry) and retaining mineral ownership, as the Canadian government was trying to encourage the western pursuit of settlers to help secure their border when the country was being formed, fee title was being granted to the settlers. In these instances it's still teh job of the mineral landman to tie up those rights. Other land comprising taht remaining 10% in AB and includes National parks, Indian reservations. The terms we throw around to distinguish are Crown (the province on behalf of her majesty) to indicate provincially owned title, and freehold (individuals, farmers, people). The Crown will not grant absolute ownership to land, and actually neither will most freeholders, as the fee title is in almost all circumstances leased out. You'll hear about landsales, these are for the Lease or Licence which grant you the right to win take and remove the resources in the benefit of society through resale and production, but these are not true "sales" in teh form of fee title. Encana is also a major fee owner, and most big shops as well, as the chain of title has been traded through business acquisitions and divestitures for many years.
edit 2: Oh yeah and the pay is good.
And if you have a degree (like a major in petroleum land management or whatever from Oklahoma), your odds of finding a job are much better than most, but the job market up here for mineral negotiators is pretty soft these days so just a heads up there, you may be better off going the surface route and trying to get in-house at an E&P which ultimately you'll more or less just be managing several groups of brokers whilst being part of a technical team trying to acquire locations. Check out this site for job openings...
http://www.landman.ca/employment/job_postings.php
Any Oil and gas (office or HR) employees in the house?
