What BC law actually requires of strata minutes
The Strata Property Act says less than most people think, and more than many councils do. Here are the rules that matter, in plain English, with references you can check.
Minute-taking duties land on volunteers, and the rules are scattered across the Strata Property Act, the Strata Property Regulation, and your strata's bylaws. This guide collects the requirements that apply to almost every strata corporation in British Columbia.
The five rules every BC strata council should know
| Rule | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Minutes must be kept for council meetings and general meetings, including the results of any votes. | Strata Property Act, s. 35(1)(a) |
| Council must inform owners of the minutes of every council meeting within 2 weeks of the meeting, approved or not. | Standard Bylaw 19 |
| Minutes must be retained for at least 6 years. | Strata Property Regulation, s. 4.1 |
| If an owner asks for copies of minutes, the strata must provide them within 2 weeks. | Strata Property Act, s. 36 |
| General meetings (AGM and SGM) have their own timing, notice, and quorum rules that the minutes should reflect. | Strata Property Act, ss. 40, 45, 48 |
Standard Bylaw 19 applies unless your strata has amended it. Always check your own registered bylaws.
Section 35: minutes are mandatory records
Section 35 of the Act lists the records every strata corporation must prepare and keep. First on the list: minutes of annual and special general meetings and council meetings, including the results of any votes. There is no exemption for small stratas, self-managed stratas, or quiet months where "nothing really happened." If council met, the corporation must have minutes of it.
The Act does not prescribe a format. What the courts and the Civil Resolution Tribunal look for is a record a reasonable owner can rely on: when the meeting happened, who was there, what was decided, and how the votes came out. Our free BC minutes template shows the structure experienced secretaries use.
The two-week rule for council minutes
Standard Bylaw 19 is short and strict: council must inform owners of the minutes of all council meetings within two weeks of the meeting, whether or not the minutes have been approved. That last clause surprises many councils. You do not wait for the next meeting to approve the minutes before circulating them. You send the draft out within two weeks and approve it later, marking it as a draft.
In practice this is the requirement busy councils miss most often, because writing up minutes is the task nobody wants. If your council is regularly late, that is exactly the problem StrataMinutes was built to remove: send us the rough notes the evening of the meeting and the finished document usually comes back within minutes.
Six years, minimum
Section 4.1 of the Strata Property Regulation sets retention periods for the records in section 35. For minutes, the minimum is six years. Most stratas sensibly keep them much longer. Old minutes are how you prove a special levy was properly approved, how you reconstruct the history of a leak, and how a new council learns why past decisions were made.
Owners have a right to copies
Under section 36, when an owner (and certain others, such as buyers with the owner's authorization) requests records, the strata corporation must make them available or provide copies within two weeks. During a sale, buyers and their lawyers routinely ask for two years of council and general meeting minutes. Stratas that cannot produce them create real problems: delayed sales, suspicious buyers, and in some cases Civil Resolution Tribunal complaints.
What the law does not require
Some common beliefs about strata minutes are not actually in the Act:
Minutes do not need to be approved before they are distributed. Standard Bylaw 19 requires the opposite: distribute within two weeks even if unapproved.
Minutes do not need to record the discussion. The Act requires decisions and vote results. A transcript of who argued what is not required and usually unwise, for privacy and for fairness to the people named.
Minutes do not need to name how each person voted in a council meeting, unless a council member asks for their opposition to be recorded. Recording the result (carried or defeated) satisfies the Act.
There is no required template. Any format works if it captures the decisions and vote results, though a consistent professional format makes minutes far easier to use and harder to challenge. See a complete sample of professionally formatted minutes.
Why compliance is worth taking seriously
The Civil Resolution Tribunal resolves most strata disputes in BC, and minutes are usually the central evidence. When minutes are missing, late, or vague, the strata corporation argues from memory against a documented complaint. Ordered record production, reversed decisions, and awarded fees are all regular outcomes. Clean minutes are inexpensive insurance.
Meet every one of these requirements automatically
StrataMinutes turns your council's rough notes into complete, professionally formatted minutes, and every document comes with a compliance checklist against the Strata Property Act's record-keeping requirements.
No credit card required for your first council meeting.
This page is general information for BC strata councils, not legal advice. See the current text of the Strata Property Act, Part 4 (Records) and the Strata Property Regulation on BC Laws.
Related guides
A strata minutes template for BC
How to take strata meeting minutes
AGM and SGM minutes in BC
A complete sample of finished strata minutes