The Increasing Complexity of Strata Management Part 5: Polarization & Conflict
In this series, we have traced how strata councils have come to resemble small businesses: more regulation, more financial complexity, more responsibility downloaded from senior levels of government onto volunteers. This installment turns to something harder to legislate around — conflict. Not the familiar owner-versus-council dispute over a special levy or a pet bylaw, but conflict within and around the council table itself: councils divided against their own members, factions of owners organizing to replace incumbents, and communities that functioned harmoniously for decades suddenly consumed by disputes that end up in lawyers' offices.
If that sounds familiar to the evening news, it should. The same polarization reshaping politics at every level of government is showing up in the smallest democratic institutions we have: strata corporations.
The polarization around us
The numbers tell a consistent story at every level of government. South of the border, Pew Research Center found in April 2026 that majorities of Americans now view both major parties unfavorably (58% and 59% respectively), and among partisans, more than nine in ten view the opposing party unfavorably. The share of Americans who dislike both parties has climbed from 21% in 2020 to 26% today.
Canada is not immune, and the trend is sharpest exactly where government most resembles a strata council: the municipal level. The Canadian Municipal Barometer reported in 2025 that 63% of local politicians have experienced some form of harassment. In Quebec, a Union des municipalités du Québec survey found 58% of municipal officials reported verbal violence and 46% reported bullying or threats — and nearly 10% of Quebec's municipal politicians (741 of roughly 8,000) resigned between 2021 and 2024. In England and Wales, 73% of councillors surveyed by the Local Government Association in 2024 reported being harassed or intimidated.
These are volunteer and near-volunteer positions — people who put their hands up to serve their communities — and they are leaving public life in measurable numbers because the environment has become hostile. Sound familiar?
The strata corporation as a microcosm of government
A strata corporation is, in a very real sense, the smallest level of government most British Columbians will ever participate in. It has an elected council, a legislated framework (the Strata Property Act), a budget approved by the voters, taxation in the form of strata fees and special levies, bylaws, enforcement powers, and a public record. It even has elections every year. Everything that happens in Victoria or Ottawa — coalition-building, opposition, procedural tactics, contested mandates — happens in a strata corporation, just closer to home. When the broader political culture becomes more adversarial, it would be surprising if strata governance didn't follow. In our observation, it has.
And where does that leave the strata manager? Much like any professional bureaucracy caught between conflicting interests. Stratawest acts as agent for the strata corporation, which speaks through its elected strata council. We do not serve any individual owner, any faction, or any particular council member — we serve the corporation itself, whoever the owners choose to lead it. When conflict erupts, we do our best to give practical advice to assist with resolving it, to explain the options the Act and the bylaws provide, and to support whatever lawful process council chooses. What we cannot do — and this surprises many owners — is intervene. We have no authority to discipline, remove or restrain a council member, and no mandate to referee a dispute between neighbours or between members of the council itself. Like the public service that carries on while governments change, our job is to keep the lights on: the finances maintained, the building serviced, the records kept, regardless of the political weather.
What we have been seeing
Over the past several years we have watched long-term, previously harmonious clients — communities we have served for a decade or more without incident — disrupted by material internal conflicts. These are not disagreements that resolve themselves over coffee in the lobby. They increasingly require legal assistance: counsel retained by the corporation, counsel retained by individual owners, and in some cases proceedings before the Civil Resolution Tribunal or the courts.
A recurring pattern deserves mention. Sometimes the parties who initiate the conflict succeed in becoming the new strata council. That is democracy working as designed — the owners are entitled to change their leadership — but the result is often a significant flip in the strata corporation's priorities. New objectives displace old ones. Practices that served the community and plans put in place for years are discarded, sometimes deliberately, sometimes simply because the institutional memory walked out the door with the outgoing council.
We do not take sides in those transitions. We want to serve the owners well regardless of who is in charge of making decisions, and we have done so through many changes of council. But we are candid about an occupational hazard: because we write letters on council's behalf, we are often associated with the incumbent council in the minds of its opponents. The signature on the bottom of an enforcement letter is ours, even though the direction behind it was council's. When a new council arrives already viewing us as the old guard's instrument, the relationship can start combative and stay that way. We have, more than once, had to exit business relationships with previously valued clients when a new council chose confrontation over collaboration. Those are among the hardest decisions we make.
A real example: when the conflict is inside the council
A recent exchange with one of our councils (details anonymized) illustrates just how limited the toolkit is. The council had carefully documented serious concerns about one of its own members: unauthorized alterations to common property, confrontational treatment of a contractor's employee, threatening correspondence to fellow council members, and involvement in litigation adverse to the corporation. They asked us a reasonable question: what can we do?
Our answer, candidly, was: less than you would hope. The Strata Property Act and typical bylaws provide essentially three avenues, each with real limits.
Deemed resignation provisions in most bylaws apply only to a member who stops showing up — typically three consecutive missed meetings or four in total. They do nothing about a member who attends every meeting and is simply impossible to work with.
Removal by the owners is the real mechanism, and it belongs to the owners alone. Council cannot remove one of its own; it can only call a special general meeting (on two weeks' notice, no petition required) and put a majority-vote removal resolution to the ownership. That means a public, contentious meeting, a cost to the corporation, and a genuine risk that the member contests the vote, makes their own case, and emerges with a stronger mandate if the resolution fails. Where general-meeting turnout is historically low, even assembling a quorum for that fight is a live question.
Bylaw enforcement can address the member's conduct as an owner — unauthorized alterations, nuisance — but section 135 of the Act requires written particulars and an opportunity to be heard before any fine, fines are typically capped between $50 and $200 per contravention, disputes likely end up at the Civil Resolution Tribunal, and most importantly, a fine removes no one from council.
The Act requires council members to act honestly, in good faith and in the best interests of the corporation (s. 31), and to disclose and abstain where they have a conflict of interest (s. 32) — but it gives council no means of disciplining a member who falls short. That accountability rests with the owners, at election time or at a removal vote. CHOA's guidance on council conflict says much the same: ignoring conflict can escalate it, a strata may only ever be able to manage a conflict rather than resolve it, and ultimately it may be necessary for the owners to change the leadership.
So our practical advice to that council — and to any council in a similar position — was this: keep documenting facts without commentary; share only verified, factual, non-defamatory information with the owners, reviewed by counsel first; address unacceptable behaviour directly, in writing, as a majority of council; remember that a difficult member still holds only one vote and no special authority; and get a short consultation with a lawyer before taking any significant step. Sometimes the wisest course is simply to decline the fight and keep moving on the pressing business facing the community. That is council's call to make — not ours, and not any one council member's.
The turnout problem
There is a quieter factor underneath all of this: most people don't vote. In the 2024 BC provincial election, turnout was about 57% of registered voters — and that was an improvement on 2020's 53.9%. This trend was reversed in 2026, with a record low turnout of just 48%. Municipally it is far worse: across the Lower Mainland's major cities, turnout in the 2022 civic elections fell an average of 7.4 points from 2018, with cities like Abbotsford and Chilliwack landing in the low twenties. Strata corporations sit at the bottom of this same curve. Many of our clients struggle to assemble a quorum for an annual general meeting, and participation at a typical AGM is often a small fraction of the ownership.
Low turnout is not just an embarrassment — it is a material governance factor. When only a sliver of owners participate, a small, motivated and well-organized faction can carry a vote that the silent majority would never have supported. Proxies deserve particular mention here: in a quiet community, a motivated party who knocks on doors and collects proxy appointments from disengaged owners can arrive at a general meeting holding enough votes to enact their agenda single-handedly — entirely legally, using a tool the Act provides. The quieter the ownership, the louder the loudest voices become; a highly motivated minority is simply more powerful than a silent majority. Much of the conflict we described above is made possible, or at least made decisive, by the empty chairs at the general meeting.
Here again we must be honest about the limits of our role: we cannot make people vote. We can issue proper notice, arrange electronic attendance, distribute proxy forms and make participation as easy as the Act allows — and we do. But a council roiled by conflict and facing a dissenting faction has exactly one durable remedy, and it is the same one available to any democratic institution: get out the vote. Engage the owners who don't normally show up, explain plainly what is at stake, and let the full ownership — not the most motivated sliver of it — decide the community's direction. In our experience, councils that do that work rarely lose to a faction; councils that don't are governed by whoever bothers to attend.
The market this is happening in
All of this is playing out against a well-documented shortage of qualified strata managers in British Columbia. As far back as 2023, industry leaders were warning that the sector was operating at roughly half capacity, that about half of the province's strata managers were within five years of retirement, and — in the words of CHOA's executive director — that "we could easily use 200 or 300 managers in the industry tomorrow and it probably wouldn't fill the gaps." More than 1.5 million British Columbians live in strata properties, and a growing number of strata corporations cannot find professional management at all. The experienced manager who leaves the industry after one too many hostile meetings is not being replaced.
Technology has been disruptive in its own way. Software platforms promising to automate strata management have made it easier than ever to offer bare-bones service at rock-bottom prices — and harder than ever for councils to tell the difference between genuine management and a portal with a phone number attached. Technology is a powerful tool in the right hands; we use it extensively ourselves. But it is not a substitute for an experienced licensed professional who knows your building, your bylaws, your history, and the Act. The combination of scarce qualified people and cheap automated alternatives has made securing solid property management harder than it has ever been.
Which brings us to the decision we never take lightly. Stratawest has always been driven by long-term relationships rather than volume — we have been in business for well over 30 years and many of our clients have been with us for decades. When a new, combative council forces us to consider exiting a relationship, we feel the weight of that choice, because we know what the owners are walking into. Too often, a council in conflict with its manager reaches for the least expensive management option on the market as a statement of change. We would gently suggest that in the current market, the cheapest option is simply not sustainable: it is cheap because it carries too many doors per manager, retains the least experienced people, and automates what should be judgment. The owners — the very people the new council set out to serve — end up paying for that twice.
Where we stand
Conflict is not going away — not in Ottawa, not in Victoria, not at city hall, and not in the council room down the hall from your strata lot. What a community can control is how it handles conflict: whether facts stay separate from commentary, whether process is followed even when it is slow, whether the owners are given accurate information and trusted to decide, and whether the volunteers doing the work are treated with the basic respect that keeps good people at the table.
Our commitment through all of it is the same as it has always been. We serve the strata corporation — the owners as a whole — through whichever council they elect. We will give practical, candid advice about the options the law actually provides, support the lawful process council chooses, and keep the business of the community running while the conflict is hopefully resolved. We won't take sides, and we won't pretend to an authority we do not have. And on the rare occasions when a relationship can no longer be productive for either side, we will say so honestly and part professionally — because a relationship-driven firm owes its clients nothing less, even on the way out the door.
If your council is navigating conflict and wants a candid conversation about its options, we are always willing to have one.