Opinion Nov 18, 2025 @ 12:00pm by Gavin Dew, Kelowna Now

Gavin Dew is the MLA for Kelowna-Mission and the BC Conservatives' shadow critic for small business and innovation.

Time and again, the Eby government keeps treating municipalities like children, imposing one-size-fits-all rules and ignoring the unintended consequences.

The government’s current rules around short term rental platforms like Airbnb were introduced to improve housing costs and availability.

But there are now concerning consequences that are hurting BC communities whose economies rely on tourism.

This is why I am tabling two legislative amendments to bring a dose of common sense and balance to the ShortTerm Rental Accommodations Act (STRAA).

The STRAA was introduced to return homes from the short-term rental market back into the long-term housing supply by tightening rules on who can operate short-term rentals and giving local governments stronger enforcement powers.

As currently written and implemented, the legislation deprives municipalities of the ability to make their own timely decisions to balance their own local priorities and needs. And it renders regions helpless in the face of short-term surges in event-driven demand that exceed existing hotel inventory.

What could have been practical policy has instead turned into a rigid top-down system that is proving impossible for municipalities to work with.

With my amendments, I am providing the government with an opportunity to do the right thing by returning a measure of local control.

The first amendment would move the effective date for municipal exemptions from the beginning of November to the beginning of May. Currently, if a community has two consecutive years of 3% vacancy they have until March 31st of the next year to pass a council motion asking the province to opt out, but the exemption does not kick in until after the summer tourism season.

That’s silly.

It means that tourist hot spots like Kelowna or Penticton could meet the vacancy criteria, pass a council resolution in March, and still be forced to wait until November for the exemption to take effect. Kelowna’s vacancy rate reached 3.8% in 2024, and is currently estimated at over 5%. It makes no sense for the City to wait another year to be allowed to move forward with a made-in-Kelowna solution.

The proposed change is simple. Communities that work hard to qualify for the opt out can actually use it when it matters most. Summer bookings, festival planning, staffing, and seasonal business activity all depend on predictable timelines.

The second amendment creates a municipal event exemption. This would let cities temporarily adjust short-term rental rules during major events that create sudden spikes in accommodation demand. In lieu of building new hotels, which is an ongoing process that is many years away from registering impact, allowing municipalities to adjust during tightly controlled event windows allows for desperately needed rental stock to become immediately available.

In the case of Metro Vancouver, imagine inviting a dozen friends to town for a massive celebration that everyone is beyond excited for. You clean the house, get the food prepared, take the time to prepare the little touches that will make their stay fantastic and memorable. Then the day arrives, your guests walk in the door, only to have to tell them that you only have two rooms available.

My proposed approach would still be capped at an absolute maximum of forty-five days per year. Municipalities would have to define the event window, pass a resolution, and report to the province. Temporary permits issued for that period would still be tracked and regulated, but could be faster and cheaper to encourage surge capacity to come onstream.

Vancouver is already facing an acute accommodation crisis as it hurtles toward the biggest event on the face of the planet, FIFA. Destination Vancouver and the BC Hotel Association report that of the city’s 13,000 hotel rooms, occupancy rates hover around 80% year-round and 90-95% during peak tourist season.

Further, a recent analysis by Deloitte on the anticipated Metro Vancouver accommodation shortfall states that while combined capacity for hotels and short-term rentals is about 41,800 spectators a day, there will be a shortfall of almost 8,000 guests per night across the nine days of scheduled matches.

BC is approaching an international moment in time that is on par with hosting the Olympics in 2010. People will travel here from across the globe and assess us not only by our friendliness, venues and transit system, but on whether they can find and afford a place to stay. The current short-term rental system does not allow communities to meet that challenge.

This is a fix that is not grounded in ideological battles. It is a set of two practical ideas to allow BC to welcome visitors comfortably without negating the government’s commitment to housing affordability.

The world is coming to BC. We need rules that reflect that reality before it is too late.