Chemainus, Canada Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Chemainus and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, as long as you live in it yourself. The catch, if what you had in mind was a second cottage near the murals paying for itself by the night, is that British Columbia closed that door in May 2024 and it hasn't reopened since. One thing to sort out before anything else, because it changes which rulebook you're reading: Chemainus isn't its own municipality. It's a community inside the Municipality of North Cowichan, on southeast Vancouver Island in the Cowichan Valley Regional District, so the bylaws governing your listing are North Cowichan's and the accommodation tax riding on top of it belongs to the regional district.

Three sign-offs stand between you and a legal booking, and you need all three. The province has to register the rental and hand you a number, North Cowichan has to issue you a business licence, and the lot itself has to sit in a zone where the bylaw permits the use, which quietly rules out a fair slice of Chemainus. Since 2025 the platforms have checked the first two before your listing goes anywhere, so a gap doesn't turn up as a fine months later. It turns up as a listing that can't take a booking.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: what North Cowichan requires in 2026, what the licence costs and when it expires, the three layers of tax on a nightly stay, how the province enforces all of it through Airbnb rather than through an inspector, and who to phone when something doesn't fit. Every figure below comes from North Cowichan's or British Columbia's own pages and bylaws, checked in July 2026, and where a number is still moving I've said so. Before you spend a dollar on furniture, run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Chemainus, Canada?

Those three sign-offs come from three different governments, and since none of them uses quite the same vocabulary, it's worth getting the definition straight before anything else. North Cowichan defines a short-term rental as any rental of a legal dwelling unit or part of one, such as a bedroom, for less than 90 consecutive days. British Columbia's Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act draws the same line at 90 days, which is unusual and convenient, because for once the municipal and provincial tests agree, so a booking of 90 nights or more isn't a short-term rental at all and falls outside both regimes.

Anything shorter than that has to clear four requirements, and helpfully North Cowichan sets all four out on one page: the rental has to be registered with the province through the B.C. short-term rental registry, it has to sit within all or part of the operator's primary residence, it needs a valid North Cowichan business licence, and the application has to arrive with a floor plan of the residence attached.

The zoning question is the one people skip, and it's also the one that ends the conversation fastest. North Cowichan's Zoning Bylaw 2950 has no use class called "short-term rental" at all, so the permission runs through a different one called bed and breakfast. The bylaw defines that as a building, or the use of a building, in which sleeping units are rented to people other than the owner's or tenant's own family, with or without meals thrown in. Fifteen zones permit it, and each one caps how many sleeping units you can offer:

Zone	Sleeping units allowed
A1, A2, A3, A5 (agricultural and rural)	Up to six
R1, R1-U (residential rural)	Up to six
C7 (Commercial Rural Hospitality)	Up to six
R2, R3, R2-R, R3-R (the standard Chemainus residential zones)	Up to three
MA1, MA2 (upland tourist commercial marine)	Permitted, see zone conditions
C2, C3 (commercial general and service)	Permitted, see zone conditions

Two absences on that list matter more in Chemainus than anywhere else in the municipality. The R3-S small-lot single-family zone doesn't list bed and breakfast among its permitted uses at all, and it covers a good deal of the newer subdivision here, so a house on an R3-S lot has no route to a licence however tidy the paperwork. Nor does the C9 Chemainus Commercial Zone, which is the downtown core where the murals and the theatre are. C9 permits a hotel; it doesn't permit you. Before you go any further, do check your own parcel on North Cowichan's zoning map, because the answer is binary and it takes about a minute.

A second condition in the R2 and R3 zones catches people who plan to move out and let the whole house. A bed and breakfast in a single-family dwelling there must be an accessory use and cannot be the principal use. That's the zoning bylaw saying, in its own words, what the province says elsewhere, and off-street parking follows the guest count as well, at one space per guest room on top of whatever the dwelling already needs.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Chemainus

Since the zone check is free and takes about a minute, do that one first, because everything from here on assumes you passed it. Unfortunately for most people arriving at this page, what's left after that isn't a business in the sense you were hoping for. It's a spare room, or a suite in the house you already sleep in.

The limit is the province's doing rather than North Cowichan's. Section 14 of the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act allows short-term rental accommodation only in the property host's principal residence, plus not more than one secondary suite or other accessory dwelling unit on the same property, and B.C. applies that rule in every municipality of 10,000 or more along with their smaller neighbours.

So North Cowichan appears by name on the province's list of communities where the requirement applies, current as of 1 June 2026, which settles it. With 31,990 residents at the 2021 Census the municipality clears that population threshold comfortably, so nothing about Chemainus being a village-sized community inside it changes the answer.

What makes this sting locally is the geography. Drive fifteen minutes north up the Island Highway to Ladysmith, or west to Lake Cowichan, and both appear on the province's list of exempt municipalities, because each sits under 10,000 people and outside the 15-kilometre band. Same island, same tourists, opposite rule. It looks arbitrary from a kitchen table in Chemainus and makes perfect sense in a spreadsheet in Victoria. Our Merritt guide and Hope guide cover two more B.C. communities outside the requirement, while Chilliwack and Maple Ridge are inside it, like Chemainus.

One narrow exception is worth knowing about if you own acreage. The province treats BC Assessment farm class (Class 9) land as exempt land, so the principal residence requirement doesn't reach a genuine farm. Keep in mind that this buys you less than it sounds like, though. North Cowichan's own business licence application checklist still asks every short-term rental applicant for "confirmation location is primary residence of applicant", so the provincial floor and the municipal counter are two separate hurdles, and clearing one doesn't clear the other.

Underneath all of this sits a demand question that no rulebook will answer for you, and 2026 sharpened it considerably. Western Forest Products announced a 12-month curtailment of the Chemainus sawmill on 23 January 2026, affecting about 150 workers, while Domtar's permanent closure of the Crofton mill on 2 December 2025 took roughly 350 more, and Domtar was North Cowichan's largest taxpayer at around $5 million a year in property taxes.

Chemainus tourism runs on the murals, the theatre and the ferries to Thetis and Penelakut Islands rather than on the mills, so summer demand here is a different animal from local employment. Still, when you model a shoulder season, model it honestly.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Chemainus, Canada

Assuming the zone works and you're able to satisfy the principal residence test, there are still two licences to collect rather than one, and they come from different places. Neither substitutes for the other.

The provincial registration comes first in practice, because North Cowichan asks for it. B.C. charges $100 a year plus a $1.50 service fee where the host lives in the unit, and $450 plus $1.50 where they don't, and every unit registers separately, so a house plus its suite is two registrations. Renewal is annual, and the province opens the renewal window 40 days before your number expires.

North Cowichan's business licence is the local half. Business Licence Bylaw 3153 makes a licence compulsory for carrying on any business in the municipality, and the Fees and Charges Bylaw 3784 sets what you pay, as of July 2026:

• $100 for a new application, and $100 to renew before 28 February
• $125 to renew late, after 28 February
• $50 where the business starts after 1 July, which is the pro-rated rate
• $10 to transfer a licence to another location

That February date is the one to diarize, because the licence itself runs on a calendar year and expires on 31 December regardless of when you got it. A licence granted in November is worth six weeks. Also remember that no licence can be transferred to another person or business, so if you sell the house, the buyer applies fresh rather than inheriting yours. The one piece of good news in the fee schedule is that your money comes back if the application is withdrawn before a decision or if the Business Licence Inspector refuses it.

The rules around that licence got noticeably sharper in 2026, and this is the change most guides written before this year miss. Business Licence Amendment Bylaw 4058 came into effect on 6 May 2026 and did three things. It let the Business Licence Inspector attach conditions built around a business's impact on its neighbours, including occupancy limits, permitted hours of operation, soundproofing and restrictions on amplified music, and parking. It let North Cowichan require a good neighbour agreement as a condition of the licence. And it added a suspension and cancellation power, so a licence can now be pulled for breaching a condition rather than merely prosecuted after the fact.

You can ask Council to reconsider a suspension or a cancellation. Even so, the notice goes up on the property in the meantime and nobody may take it down early, which in a town this size is its own kind of penalty.

Two housekeeping duties come with the licence and they're easy to overlook. You have to post it in a conspicuous place at the property, and you have to tell the Business Licence Inspector straight away if your mailing address or the business name changes.

Once both numbers exist, they both have to be visible. Section 13 of the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act requires a short-term rental offer to carry the valid business licence number where a business licence requirement applies, and the valid registration number. North Cowichan has a business licence requirement, so in Chemainus that means both, on every listing, on every platform.

So what happens if you skip all this? The penalties come in three sets, though the local ones are almost beside the point next to what the province can do. North Cowichan's Business Licence Bylaw caps a fine on conviction at $200 plus costs, and the municipal ticket for carrying on business without a licence is $200 as well. The Zoning Bylaw bites a little harder, running from $100 to $2,000 per offence on summary conviction, with the ticket for using land contrary to its permitted use set at $100.

The real exposure sits with the province, because B.C. Reg. 268/2023 prices a failure to register a short-term rental offer at up to $5,000 for a first contravention, $7,500 for a second and $10,000 for a third, and contravening the principal residence requirement carries exactly the same scale. Leaving the business licence number or the registration number off a listing is cheaper at $500, then $750, then $1,000, yet none of these is a one-time cost. Be aware that the Act allows a separate penalty for each day a contravention continues, and that a repeat still counts as a repeat two years later.

Required Documents for Chemainus, Canada Short-Term Rentals

Since a refused application gets your fee back but not your summer, it's worth getting the file right the first time. North Cowichan publishes a business licence application checklist and states plainly that incomplete applications and checklists will not be accepted, which in practice means the file comes back to you rather than moving to review.

Every applicant, whatever the business, supplies:

• The business or trade name, the address including any unit number, the type of application and of business, and owner contact details
• A full description of the operation. The checklist warns that "vague/minimal descriptions will not be accepted", so describe the actual stay: which rooms, how many guests, whether meals are served
• The number of parking spaces on site, which the zoning bylaw measures against one space per guest room plus the dwelling's own requirement

Short-term rentals and bed and breakfasts then add four items of their own, and these are the ones that decide the application:

• A floor plan of the residence, as a PDF attachment or a printed copy
• Confirmation that the location is the applicant's primary residence
• Cooking facilities provided, if any
• Occupancy certificates or inspection reports, which North Cowichan may request where a suite is involved

The provincial registration wants its own evidence, and it's a different set. B.C. asks for proof of identity, being a B.C. driver's licence, Services Card or ID card, plus at least two supporting documents from a list that includes the land title, a property assessment notice, an insurance certificate, a property tax notice, an affidavit, banking statements or government correspondence. Renting rather than owning? Then the rental agreement or a landlord's rent increase notice goes in as well.

Two process details are worth getting straight before you plan around a date. North Cowichan invoices the licence fee after approval and won't take payment before it, so no amount of prepaying speeds this up. And the application form says outright that you must not conduct business before the licence is issued.

As for timing, the municipality says processing varies depending on whether other departments have to sign off, which for a short-term rental with a suite can mean anywhere from several weeks to two or three months. Don't forget to build that into a launch date rather than a booking calendar you've already opened.

Chemainus, Canada Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all of that and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to sort out, and three separate governments each take a slice of the same nightly rate. The good news is that if every booking arrives through a platform, you'll probably collect none of it yourself.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
GST	5%	Canada Revenue Agency, or the platform where you aren't registered
Provincial sales tax on accommodation	8%	B.C. Ministry of Finance, or the marketplace facilitator
Municipal and regional district tax (MRDT)	2%	Cowichan Valley Regional District, collected with the PST
PST on marketplace services	7%	Charged to you by the platform on its own fees

The provincial pair is the larger piece, since B.C. applies 8% PST to sales of short-term accommodation and then up to 3% MRDT on behalf of local governments. The Cowichan rate is set in the Designated Accommodation Area Tax Regulation, where Schedule 2 lists the Cowichan Valley Regional District at 2% with a repeal date of 1 July 2027, so the region's tourism levy comes up for renewal inside the next year. I'd treat that 2% as a rate that could move rather than a fixture.

Who actually hands the money over depends on how you sell. An online marketplace facilitator has to register and collect both the PST and the MRDT on accommodation sold through its platform, and it charges you 7% PST on its own marketplace services as well, meaning the listing, advertising, customer service and payment processing you're paying for. So you don't have to register yourself where every booking comes through such a platform, though sell through a platform and directly and registration becomes mandatory, which catches out anyone taking repeat guests by e-transfer on the side.

Three exemptions are worth knowing here, and the first is useful in a mill town full of contract workers, because you charge no PST or MRDT on a stay that runs a continuous period of 27 days or more. The other two are narrower: nothing is due where the accommodation goes for $30 or less per day or $210 or less per week or where you earned less than $2,500 from it in the previous 12 months and reasonably expect the same going forward. So a month-long booking is a materially different product from a weekend one, and in a town hosting rotating trades that isn't a hypothetical.

GST sits on top at 5% in British Columbia. The Canada Revenue Agency's rules on platform-based short-term accommodation put the collection duty on the platform operator where the host isn't GST/HST registered, and on you where you are. Whether you're registered turns on the CRA's small supplier test, which sets the line at $30,000 of taxable supplies over four consecutive calendar quarters, so a spare room in Chemainus usually stays under it while a suite plus a second listing might not.

Then there's the federal rule that turns every paragraph above into a tax question. Section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act denies deductions for a "non-compliant short-term rental", which means one operated somewhere short-term rentals aren't permitted, or one that fails to meet all applicable registration, licensing and permit requirements. Because the denial is proportional, your expenses come off in the ratio of non-compliant days to total short-term rental days, so a summer run without a licence costs you the summer's deductions rather than some flat amount.

So hosting on an R3-S lot, or without a North Cowichan licence, doesn't only expose you to a $200 ticket. It can also strip the mortgage interest, the insurance and the cleaning off your return for every night you did it.

British Columbia Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That deduction rule bites hardest in provinces that actually run a registry, which brings us back to B.C., because it runs the strictest one in the country. Nearly everything that constrains a Chemainus host was written in Victoria rather than at North Cowichan's municipal hall.

The Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act arrived in 2023 and phased in over roughly two years. The principal residence limit and the end of legal non-conforming use protection took effect on 1 May 2024. The provincial registry opened in January 2025, and every listing in B.C. has had to display a registration number since 1 May 2025.

Enforcement then landed in two steps: platforms had to stop advertising unregistered listings from 2 June 2025, and cancel their future bookings from 23 June 2025.

The mechanism worth understanding is section 18, because it's the one North Cowichan can reach for directly. Where a local government has imposed a business licence requirement and finds a listing that doesn't comply with it, it can serve notice on the platform and the host, and then require the platform to stop providing services for that listing. The platform must comply.

So a municipality with a business licence bylaw doesn't have to prove anything in court to take a listing offline; it can go to Airbnb instead. Chemainus sits squarely inside that, because North Cowichan has exactly such a requirement.

The requirement isn't permanent everywhere, mind you, and 2026 gave us the first proof of that when a one-time regulation let Kelowna drop the principal residence requirement from 1 June 2026, making it the first B.C. municipality to get out. From 2027 the route becomes general, so a local government whose community has had a rental vacancy rate of 3% or more for two consecutive years can ask for an opt-out by resolution submitted to the Minister by 28 February, effective 1 June that year. Whether North Cowichan ever qualifies is a housing-market question rather than a political one, though, and I wouldn't build a purchase around it. Watch out for guidance written before June 2026 that treats the requirement as immovable, because that's no longer true.

Above the province, the federal layer is thin. There's no national short-term rental statute in Canada, no national registration number and no national tourist tax, which is why B.C.'s rules feel so much heavier than a host in Ontario or Alberta would expect. If you're weighing Chemainus against a Fraser Valley market, our Abbotsford guide covers a city on the same provincial footing but with a very different local bylaw on top.

Does Chemainus, Canada Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Local enforcement has never been the binding constraint here, and the numbers show why. Going back to September 2023, North Cowichan councillor Chris Istace told council that there were 226 Airbnbs listed in the municipality and 23 with business licences, as the Cowichan Valley Citizen reported in October that year. That's better than nine in ten operating outside the bylaw, with nobody stopping them. That link goes to an Internet Archive capture, by the way, since the live page now serves the section front rather than the story.

What changed wasn't North Cowichan's appetite for inspections. It was that the province moved enforcement into the booking flow. Since June 2025 a listing without a valid registration number is removed by the platform rather than cited by an officer, and section 18 lets North Cowichan point at a listing that lacks a municipal licence and have it pulled the same way. That's a different kind of risk from a ticket, because there's no version of it you can price in and absorb. An unlicensed listing in Chemainus doesn't earn less.

It earns nothing.

The municipal side has teeth again too, for the first time in a while. Bylaw 4058 gave North Cowichan the power to suspend or cancel a licence outright from May 2026, rather than only prosecuting for a $200 fine, and to write neighbour conditions into it in the first place. Complaints run through a public bylaw infraction complaint form that anybody can file, and neighbours in a town of Chemainus's size tend to know exactly which house is which. Bylaw Services also has an entry power under Business Licence Bylaw 3153 to inspect a property at reasonable times to check compliance.

One number floating around deserves correcting, because it turns up in searches. Councillor Istace described the fine for non-compliance as "$1,500 a day" at that 2023 meeting. Going through North Cowichan's own bylaws, I couldn't match that figure to anything, since the Business Licence Bylaw caps a conviction fine at $200, the ticket is $200, and the Zoning Bylaw runs $100 to $2,000 per offence. So treat $1,500 a day as a councillor's remark rather than a rate.

The number that should worry you is the province's, at up to $5,000 for each day you keep going.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Chemainus, Canada

Given how much of the risk sits at the front of this process rather than the end, the order below saves real money. The first three steps are free and any one of them can stop you, so working through them out of sequence is how people end up furnishing a room they can't legally let.

1. Check your zone before anything else. Look your parcel up on North Cowichan's zoning map. If it comes back R3-S or C9, there's no bed and breakfast use available and no application worth making.
2. Confirm the property is your principal residence. The provincial rule allows your own home plus at most one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit on the same property. A second house in Chemainus that you don't live in is out.
3. Read your strata bylaws or your lease. Neither the province nor the municipality overrides a strata rental restriction or a landlord's clause, and both will happily license something your building forbids.
4. Count your sleeping units and your parking. R2 and R3 cap you at three sleeping units and require the use to stay accessory to the dwelling; A1, A5, R1 and C7 allow up to six. Add one parking space per guest room to whatever the house already needs.
5. Register with the province. Budget $100 plus $1.50 where you live in the unit, and register each unit separately. Have your ID and two supporting documents ready.
6. Apply to North Cowichan. Email the completed checklist and application to [email protected] or drop them at the municipal hall, with the floor plan, primary residence confirmation and a description of the operation that a stranger could picture.
7. Wait, and don't take bookings yet. Processing runs from several weeks to two or three months where another department has to sign off, and you're invoiced only once approval comes through.
8. Put both numbers on every listing. The provincial registration number and the North Cowichan business licence number, on Airbnb, Vrbo and anywhere else.
9. Sort out tax before your first guest. Confirm whether your platform is collecting the 8% PST and 2% MRDT, and check whether your expected revenue crosses the $30,000 GST registration threshold.
10. Diarize 28 February. Renew before that date to pay $100 rather than $125, and remember the licence itself dies on 31 December each year.

Who to Contact in Chemainus, Canada about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Wherever you get stuck in that sequence, one of four offices owns the answer, and picking the right one first saves a transferred call. All of the municipal ones sit at the same building, and there's no separate Chemainus office to visit.

The Licence Itself

North Cowichan Business Licensing Services handles applications, renewals, transfers and anything about the short-term rental licence.

• Address: Municipal Hall, 7030 Trans-Canada Highway, North Cowichan, BC V9L 6A1
• Phone: 250-746-3108
• Fax: 250-746-3133
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. for the counter, from 8:00 a.m. by phone
• Renewals: through MyMuni, North Cowichan's online portal

Zoning and Conditions of Use

Whether your lot permits a bed and breakfast, and what the zone's conditions of use allow, is a Planning question rather than a licensing one. North Cowichan says so on its own short-term rentals page.

• Phone: 250-746-3104
• Email: [email protected]

Complaints and Enforcement

North Cowichan Bylaw Services takes complaints about non-compliant operations, in both directions: it's who a neighbour calls about you, and who you call about the party house next door.

• Phone: 250-746-3108
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
• Online: the bylaw infraction complaint form
• Municipality main line: 250-746-3100, [email protected]

Provincial Registration and Tax

Registration, the principal residence declaration and administrative penalties belong to the province's Short-Term Rental Branch rather than to North Cowichan, and the PST and MRDT belong to the Ministry of Finance, so both start from the province's short-term rental registry pages. Those pages carry the current registration portal, the fees and the renewal windows.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Chemainus, Canada, on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Those offices hear the same handful of frustrations over and over, and the online conversation runs along much the same lines. What follows is my read of how hosts in this part of Vancouver Island talk about the rules rather than any kind of survey, and I haven't sampled Reddit or BiggerPockets threads directly for this one, so weigh it accordingly.

• Investors left, and mostly didn't argue about it. Since 2024 the Canadian short-term rental conversation has moved off B.C.'s principal residence communities almost entirely, because the product investors want, a whole unit let by the night, isn't available at any price in a town like Chemainus. Threads that stay in the province end up in exempt towns or in the 90-plus-day furnished market.
• Resident hosts describe an administrative slog rather than a wall. Complaints from people who do qualify cluster around timelines and documents: floor plans redrawn, suite occupancy certificates requested, applications sitting while another department reviews them. That's ordinary for a municipality this size, and it isn't a policy objection.
• The Ladysmith comparison comes up constantly. Being fifteen minutes from an exempt municipality is a hard thing to be philosophical about, and it's the most reliable source of frustration I've seen from hosts around Cowichan.
• Nobody still claims the rules go unenforced. That argument ended when the platforms started checking registration numbers in June 2025, and what people debate now is whether the principal residence rule is doing anything for local housing supply, which is an open question and a different one.

So if you're weighing Chemainus against somewhere less restricted, put real numbers beside the rules rather than deciding on feel, and the Canada market page is a reasonable place to begin that comparison.

What the last two years in British Columbia taught hosts, though, goes wider than any one town. The rule that decides your business is rarely written by the government closest to you, and it's almost never enforced by the one you'd think to phone. Chemainus lost its investor market to a statute drafted in Victoria and enforced inside a booking engine, with the municipal hall barely involved. Wherever you buy next, find out who holds that lever before you sign anything.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Chemainus in 2026?

Yes, but only in the home you live in. Chemainus is part of the Municipality of North Cowichan, where British Columbia's principal residence requirement applies, so short-term rentals are limited to the host's principal residence plus at most one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit on the same property. You also need a provincial registration number, a North Cowichan business licence, and a lot in one of the fifteen zones that permit bed and breakfast use.

How much does a Chemainus short-term rental licence cost?

Two fees apply. British Columbia charges $100 a year plus a $1.50 service fee to register a rental where the host lives, or $450 plus $1.50 where they don't, per unit. North Cowichan charges $100 for the business licence, $100 to renew before 28 February, $125 to renew after that date, or $50 where the business starts after 1 July. The municipal licence expires on 31 December each year.

What happens if you list a Chemainus property without registering?

The platform removes it. Since 2 June 2025 B.C. platforms cannot advertise unregistered listings, and since 23 June 2025 they must cancel future bookings for them. On top of that, failing to register carries a provincial administrative penalty of up to $5,000 for a first contravention, $7,500 for a second and $10,000 for a third, and a separate penalty can be imposed for each day the contravention continues. Federal tax deductions can also be denied.

Which Chemainus zones allow a short-term rental?

Fifteen North Cowichan zones permit bed and breakfast use, which is how the zoning bylaw describes a short-term rental. A1, A2, A3, A5, R1, R1-U and C7 allow up to six sleeping units; R2, R3, R2-R and R3-R allow up to three and require the use to stay accessory to the dwelling. The R3-S small-lot zone and the C9 Chemainus Commercial Zone do not permit it at all.

Do you have to charge tax on a Chemainus short-term rental?

Yes, though your platform usually handles it. British Columbia applies 8% PST plus the Cowichan Valley Regional District's 2% MRDT to short-term accommodation, and 5% GST sits on top. An online marketplace facilitator must register and collect the PST and MRDT on bookings made through it. No PST or MRDT applies to a continuous stay of 27 days or more, to accommodation at $30 or less per day, or where you earned under $2,500 from it in the previous 12 months.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.