WorkSafeBC Duties When Your Strata Hires Help

Self-managed strata corporations hire help constantly — a caretaker, a landscaping crew, a window washer on a swing stage, an electrician pulling conduit for EV charging. The Strata Property Act tells you who approves the spending and who owns the thing being worked on. It says nothing about workplace safety. That comes from a separate statute, the Workers Compensation Act, administered by WorkSafeBC, and it applies to strata corporations the same way it applies to any other organization that engages people to do work.

There is no requirement to hire a property manager — a strata corporation may be self-managed by its elected council — but self-management means the council, not a management company, is the one whose homework has to be done.

Is your strata an employer? It depends on how you engage people

The answer turns on facts, not labels:

• You directly hire and pay a person (a resident caretaker, a part-time cleaner, a gardener paid by the hour) — the strata corporation is generally an employer under the Workers Compensation Act, which brings registration, premium and occupational health and safety duties with it.
• You engage an incorporated contracting firm with its own workers, tools and insurance — that firm is normally the employer of its own crew. Your strata's exposure shifts toward the duties that attach to the owner of the workplace and, on jobs involving more than one employer, to prime contractor responsibilities.
• You pay someone cash to "help out" — this is the arrangement that most often turns out, after an incident, to have been employment. Calling someone a contractor does not make them one.

Whether a worker is an employee or an independent operator is a WorkSafeBC determination based on the working relationship. If you are unsure which category your caretaker falls into, ask WorkSafeBC directly rather than assuming.

Questions councils actually ask

Q: A contractor is working on our roof. Are we responsible for their safety?
A: Not for supervising their trade work, but the multiple-employer workplace rules in the Workers Compensation Act generally place coordination duties on a designated prime contractor — and where no prime contractor is designated in writing, those duties tend to fall back on the owner of the workplace, which is the strata corporation. On any job with more than one employer on site at the same time, confirm in the contract who the prime contractor is.

Q: Should we ask for a clearance letter?
A: Yes. A WorkSafeBC clearance letter confirms a firm is registered and in good standing on its premiums. Requesting one before work starts, and keeping it on file, is standard practice — it is not a Strata Property Act requirement, but it is cheap protection against being pursued for another firm's unpaid assessments.

Q: Does our strata insurance cover this?
A: No. Section 149 requires the strata corporation to carry property insurance on common property, common assets, buildings shown on the strata plan and original owner-developer fixtures, on a full-replacement-value basis (Strata Property Act s.149). Property insurance is not workers' compensation coverage and not liability coverage. They are three different things.

Practical steps before a contractor starts

• Get a written contract that names the prime contractor, the scope and the site rules.
• Request a current WorkSafeBC clearance letter and a certificate of liability insurance naming the strata corporation.
• Tell the contractor about known hazards — asbestos in older buildings, roof anchors, confined spaces, live electrical rooms.
• Note in council minutes who was engaged, for what, and on what authority. Clean records make maintenance planning and work orders far easier to defend later.

For electrical work — increasingly common as buildings prepare for EV charging infrastructure — verify the contractor holds the appropriate licence for the work, not just general good standing.

Where the Strata Property Act does touch this

A few intersections matter:

• Emergency work. Section 98(3) allows expenditure from the operating fund or the contingency reserve fund where there are reasonable grounds to believe an immediate expenditure is necessary to ensure safety or prevent significant loss or damage, limited to the minimum amount needed, with owners informed as soon as feasible (s.98). Standard Bylaw 21(2) similarly lets a council member spend to repair or replace common property or common assets where that is immediately required for safety (Schedule of Standard Bylaws) — check whether your registered bylaws have replaced bylaw 21.
• Work orders. If your strata receives a notice or order from a public or local authority requiring work on a strata lot, s.84 requires it to promptly give that notice to the owner, and the owner must do the work (s.84).
• Records. Under Regulation s.4.1, written contracts including insurance policies are kept at least 6 years after they end, and correspondence at least 2 years (Strata Property Regulation).

Tracking clearance letters, certificates and contract expiry dates alongside your other records is exactly the sort of thing ManageStrata is built to keep in one place, and tools like SearchStrata can use AI to pull terms out of years of contracts and minutes when you need to know what a previous council actually agreed to.

If your council also oversees property outside BC, note that the safety regime and the governing condominium statute differ province to province — see condominium management in Alberta for contrast.

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.