Strata Property Act Basics for BC Council Members

If you've just joined a strata council in Squamish or Whistler, the Strata Property Act can feel like a wall. It isn't, really. Once you know the handful of moving parts, most of council work makes sense. This is a plain-English primer on the Strata Property Act basics every BC council member should know: who has which job, how bylaws and rules differ, what votes need what threshold, how the money has to be handled, and where disputes end up. We run strata files up and down the Sea to Sky, and the councils that have the smoothest year are the ones that get these fundamentals right early.

This is a general guide, not legal advice. For the authoritative text, see the Strata Property Act and Strata Property Regulation; for dispute procedure, the Civil Resolution Tribunal; and for anything contentious or money-significant, talk to a strata lawyer.

What the Strata Property Act actually is

The Strata Property Act is the BC statute that creates and governs strata corporations: the legal entity that owns and runs the common property when land is subdivided into individually owned units ("strata lots"). Condos are the obvious example, but townhome complexes, duplexes, bare-land stratas and commercial stratas all fall under it. The Strata Property Regulation sits underneath the Act and fills in operational detail: notice periods, what goes on certain forms, the rules around depreciation reports, and so on.

Three layers of rules apply to your building, in order of authority:

• The Act and Regulation: the law. Can't be contracted around.
• Your filed bylaws: your strata's own constitution, registered at the Land Title Office.
• Your rules: narrower, council-made, governing use of common property.

Anything your bylaws don't address falls back to the Schedule of Standard Bylaws in the Act. Most established Sea to Sky stratas replaced or heavily amended those years ago, so step one for any new council member is to actually read your own filed bylaws, not a generic version.

Who does what: corporation, council, owners

People use "the strata" loosely. The Act is precise:

• The strata corporation is the legal entity; every owner is automatically a member. It can sue and be sued, hold money, own things, enter contracts.
• The owners make the big decisions, collectively, at general meetings, by vote. They elect the council. They approve the budget. They pass bylaw amendments and special levies.
• The strata council is the elected group (typically a handful of owners) that runs things between meetings, within the authority the owners and the bylaws give it. Council members are volunteers and they have a statutory duty to act honestly, in good faith, and with the care of a reasonably prudent person.
• The strata manager, if you have one, is hired by the council and acts on its instructions. They don't replace the council; they execute, advise, and keep you compliant. (More on that distinction in our guide to hiring strata management in the Sea to Sky.)

The line that trips councils up: the council can't unilaterally do things the Act reserves for the owners. Approving a budget, amending a bylaw, levying most special levies: those are owner decisions made by vote at a meeting, not council decisions.

Bylaws vs rules, the distinction councils get wrong most

This one matters because getting it wrong makes your "enforcement" unenforceable.

Practical translation: if it's something you want to hold owners to and it matters (rental restrictions, who pays for window repairs, whether dogs are allowed) it almost certainly needs to be a bylaw, passed by a ¾ vote at a general meeting and filed. A rule the council writes on a Tuesday night won't carry that weight.

The vote thresholds: majority, ¾, unanimous

Every decision at a general meeting has a required threshold, and using the wrong one is a classic way to get a decision quashed at the CRT. The Act assigns them; the common ones:

• Majority vote (more than half the votes cast): the annual budget, electing council, most routine business.
• ¾ vote (at least 75% of votes cast): amending bylaws, most special levies, significant changes in the use or appearance of common property, some other higher-stakes items.
• Unanimous vote (every eligible vote): a short list, cancelling the strata, certain dealings with common property and land.
• Majority vote at a meeting where the people voting represent a quorum still applies, quorum is its own requirement, separate from the threshold.

A couple of wrinkles worth knowing: in sectioned stratas, some matters are decided by the relevant section's owners, not the whole strata; and certain bylaw amendments that single out a type of strata lot (like rentals) have extra rules. When in doubt, check the Act or ask your manager before the meeting. Fixing a botched vote afterward is far more painful.

How meetings work: AGMs and SGMs

The owners exercise their power at general meetings. There are two kinds:

• Annual General Meeting (AGM): must be held within a set window each year. Mandatory agenda items include presenting financial statements, approving the coming year's budget, and electing the council.
• Special General Meeting (SGM): called when something can't wait for the AGM (a special levy, an urgent bylaw change). The council can call one; owners holding a threshold share of votes can demand one.

Both have rules about notice (how far in advance, what must be included: proposed resolutions in their exact wording, the proposed budget, etc.), quorum, proxies, and minutes. Get the notice wrong and a decision made at the meeting is vulnerable. We walk through running these properly, and the mistakes that get decisions overturned, in our AGM and SGM guide for Sea to Sky councils.

The money: operating fund, CRF, and depreciation reports

The Act is strict about strata money, and for good reason. Two funds:

• Operating fund: pays the recurring stuff: insurance, utilities, landscaping, management, routine repairs. Funded by monthly strata fees, set by the approved budget, allocated to owners by unit entitlement.
• Contingency reserve fund (CRF): savings for major repairs and replacements that don't happen every year: roofs, building envelope, elevators, parkade membranes. The Act sets minimum contribution rules and limits on what the CRF can be spent on without an owner vote.

When the CRF isn't enough for a big-ticket project, the strata raises a special levy, a one-time charge on owners, almost always needing a ¾ vote. Special levies are the single biggest source of owner anger we see, and they're largely avoidable with planning.

That planning tool is the depreciation report (a reserve fund study). Stratas of five or more lots must obtain one on a set cycle (the requirements have been tightened recently) and it inventories the major components, assesses their condition and remaining life, and models funding scenarios. A council that actually uses its depreciation report to top up the CRF year over year is a council that doesn't get ambushed. We cover this in depth in how depreciation reports work in BC.

Special levies aren't bad luck. They're usually the bill for a CRF that was kept artificially low for years. The depreciation report is the warning you get in advance.

Fines, enforcement, and the CRT

When an owner breaks a bylaw or rule, the Act sets out a process the council has to follow before it can fine or otherwise act:

1. Tell the owner in writing what the alleged contravention is, with enough detail to respond.
2. Give them a reasonable chance to respond, in writing, and a hearing before council if they ask for one.
3. Then decide, and only then impose a fine within the limits the Regulation sets, or take other allowed steps (in serious cases, work with counsel on more).

Skip the process and the fine doesn't hold up. Do it properly and it generally does.

If the dispute doesn't resolve, it almost always goes to the Civil Resolution Tribunal, an online tribunal with broad mandatory jurisdiction over strata matters: bylaw enforcement, fines, unpaid strata fees, disputes about repair obligations, and more. Some matters still go to BC Supreme Court, but the CRT is where most council disputes land. A licensed strata manager (strata management is a licensed activity in BC, overseen by the BC Financial Services Authority) should be keeping your enforcement steps clean precisely so that if it does reach the CRT, you're on solid ground. The recurring ones in our region, and how they get resolved, are in our piece on common strata disputes in the Sea to Sky.

We thought we knew our bylaws until we actually pulled the filed versions, turned out half of what council had been "enforcing" for years wasn't in there. Sorting that out was the first thing our manager did.

Where this leaves your council

You don't need to memorise the Strata Property Act. You need to know: the council runs things between meetings but the owners make the big calls; bylaws (¾ vote, filed) outrank rules (council-made, ratified later); budgets and special levies happen at meetings with proper notice; the CRF plus a used-not-shelved depreciation report is how you avoid levy shocks; and enforcement only works if you follow the steps. Get those right and most years are quiet.

If your council wants a licensed manager who keeps the compliance side airtight (the votes, the notices, the trust accounting, the CRT-proof enforcement trail) that's the core of what we do on Sea to Sky strata files. Start on our owners and councils page or get in touch for a straightforward conversation about your building. And if you're weighing professional management against staying self-managed, our hiring guide lays out the trade-offs.