Tofino council set to ask province to be exempt from short-term rental rule

After voluntarily opting into B.C.’s short-term rental rules, Tofino councillors have decided they want out.

After community pushback, Tofino council has approved a motion to ask the B.C. government to be exempt from the province’s Short-Term Rental Accommodation Regulations and opt-out of the principal residence requirement.

Staff are being asked to submit the request to B.C.’s housing minister before March 31, 2025.

“I’m very thrilled, quite over the moon,” says Andrew Sadler, a Tofino resident.

Sadler lives in a long-term rental where there’s a short-term accommodation suite on the property. In order to be compliant with provincial restrictions, the landlord would’ve needed to register Sadler as the host for the short-term rental on the property – which was a surprise to members in the community when the provincial registry details were released in January.

“I’d have to register, provide my SIN number. I would have to share equal responsibility over the operation of the short-term rental operation with my landlord and all the funds for the short-term rental would have to go through myself as well,” says Sadler.

The reality opened up a number of questions, such as who reports the income for tax purposes, and how would the landlord ultimately be paid?

“We’ve got an awesome relationship. If anyone can make it, we can make it work. But even for us it was getting to be quite onerous and risky for both landlord and tenant,” Sadler says.

Tofino wasn’t initially on the province’s list of communities required to adhere to its Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act. The district asked to be included in March 2024, and the program has slowly been coming online since.

“We’ve been making these decisions around opting in always with some information missing,” says Tofino councillor Al Anderson in chambers.

He was among four of seven council members who voted in favour of opting out, requesting time to build a solution that would better fit Tofino.

“I think we have to look at how we enforce short-term rentals, some of our bylaws around them,” he says.

Tofino Mayor Dan Law notes local bylaws and zoning regulations are in place to restrict the number of short-term rentals in the community as a way of protecting housing availability – and agrees more work is needed to enforce them.