Can a BC Strata Council Make Decisions by Email?

Email is how most self-managed councils actually communicate. Someone spots a leak, three members reply "agreed," and the plumber is booked before anyone opens a calendar. The question is whether that exchange counts as a decision of the strata council — and whether it will hold up if an owner later challenges it.

The short answer: it depends on your strata's registered bylaws, and under the Standard Bylaws the picture is narrower than most councils assume.

What the Standard Bylaws say about how council decides

Under Standard Bylaw 18, at council meetings decisions must be made by a majority of council members present in person at the meeting, the president may break a tie with a second deciding vote (unless there are only 2 strata lots), and the results of all votes must be recorded in the council meeting minutes.

Two things follow from that wording:

• The Standard Bylaws frame council decision-making as something that happens at a meeting, with a vote that gets minuted.
• The Standard Bylaws are a default. Many strata corporations have amended bylaw 18 — some to allow attendance and voting by telephone or other electronic means, some to allow written or electronic consent resolutions between meetings. Whether your council can decide by email turns on your own registered bylaws, not on general practice.

A related point that causes confusion: since November 24, 2022, all BC strata corporations may hold electronic or hybrid general meetings and accept electronic votes without passing a bylaw. That change is about AGMs and SGMs. It is not a licence to treat an email thread as a council vote — for council procedure, look to your bylaws.

Direct answers: strata council email votes

Q: Can our council pass a motion by email?
A: Only if your registered bylaws permit decisions outside a meeting or by electronic means. If your strata still uses Standard Bylaw 18 unamended, decisions are made by a majority of council members present in person at a meeting, and the vote must be recorded in the minutes.

Q: Is an email decision automatically void?
A: The Act doesn't say that. In practice the risk is evidentiary and procedural — an undocumented email consensus is hard to defend, easy for an owner to dispute, and may not appear in the minutes the way bylaw 18 requires. Councils commonly manage this by ratifying the informal decision at the next properly called meeting so it is recorded.

Q: Can we use email to call a meeting quickly?
A: Yes, and this is the cleanest route. Under Standard Bylaw 14, any council member may call a meeting on at least one week's notice, the notice does not have to be in writing, and a meeting may be held on less than one week's notice if all council members consent in advance — or, in an emergency, where members consent or are unavailable after reasonable attempts to contact them. Council must also inform owners about a council meeting as soon as feasible after it is called.

The legitimate way to act between meetings: delegation

Standard Bylaw 20 lets the council delegate some or all of its powers and duties to one or more council members or to non-members, and revoke the delegation. Spending powers may be delegated only by a resolution that either authorises a specific amount for a specific purpose, or grants general spending authority that sets a maximum amount and indicates the purposes or conditions.

The council may not delegate its power to determine, on the facts of a particular case:

• whether a person has contravened a bylaw or rule;
• whether a person should be fined, and the amount; or
• whether a person should be denied access to a recreational facility.

So a properly minuted delegation — "the treasurer may authorise up to $X for plumbing repairs" — lets someone act on an email in the moment without pretending the email was the decision. Enforcement decisions, by contrast, must be made by council itself.

Paper trail: what has to exist afterwards

Whatever route you take, the record matters. The strata corporation must prepare minutes of council meetings including the results of any votes, and must retain correspondence sent or received by the strata corporation and council (s. 35). Retention periods are set by Regulation s. 4.1 — at least 6 years for council and general meeting minutes, and at least 2 years for correspondence. Council email is not a private side channel; it is a record class with a retention period.

That's also why bylaw wording deserves a careful read rather than a memory test. Tools like SearchStrata can help you pull the relevant passages out of a long consolidated bylaw set using AI analysis, and a platform like ManageStrata keeps meeting notices, minutes and decision records in one place instead of scattered inboxes. If you're new to the job, our guides on preparing AGM minutes and self-managing a strata in BC cover the surrounding mechanics, and bylaws vs rules explains which instrument can change council procedure.

A practical approach

• Use email to discuss, circulate documents and schedule — not to substitute for a vote your bylaws locate at a meeting.
• For anything urgent, call a short-notice meeting under bylaw 14 rather than declaring an email consensus.
• Delegate in advance under bylaw 20 for recurring or time-sensitive spending, with a maximum and stated purposes.
• Minute everything, including ratification of anything decided informally.
• Remember owner-facing deadlines: under s. 34.1, an owner or tenant may request a hearing in writing, council must meet to hear them within 4 weeks, and where the purpose is to seek a decision, must give a written decision within one week after the hearing.
• If your council genuinely needs to decide electronically, the durable fix is a bylaw amendment approved by the owners — not an unwritten habit.

This article is general information about BC strata law, not legal advice; verify against the current Strata Property Act and Regulation or consult a BC strata lawyer.