Straight answers
What are the housing requirements for temporary farm workers in BC?
Two sets of rules apply at once. Federally, an employer hiring through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program or the Agricultural Stream must provide housing that is adequate, suitable and affordable as defined by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, must supply free return transport between the accommodation and the workplace, and must file a housing inspection carried out by a provincial, territorial or municipal authority or an authorized private inspector, dated within the eight months before the application is received. Under no circumstances can the employer recover those costs from the worker. In British Columbia the inspection itself is provincial: every SAWP and Agricultural Stream applicant must use the BC Agriculture Council inspection form, completed by an inspector from WALI's approved list.
Figures verified against the sources below · September 9, 2026
01 — The longer answer
The two rulebooks, and where they meet
The inspection is now pass or fail
WALI's guide records that the result category “pass with conditions” has been removed because Service Canada no longer accepts it. Deficiencies the inspector notes must be addressed before temporary foreign workers occupy the accommodation, rather than after. Inspections moved to an electronic format through the WALI Employer Portal on 1 August 2023, and the current guide is version 26-1, dated March 2026. Schedule F is not an acceptable substitute for the BCAC form in BC.
Occupancy is a calculation, not a judgement call
This is the part worth knowing before anyone draws a building. The inspection form derives an occupant number from each element of the accommodation separately, and the inspection then records a single maximum occupancy. Living space gives square feet divided by 80. Bedroom volume gives cubic feet divided by 300. Beds give one occupant each. Toilets, showers and bathroom sinks each give the fixture count multiplied by 7. Washer and dryer pairs give the count multiplied by 10. Residential fridges give the count multiplied by 6, while a walk-in cooler is measured as shelf space, at roughly 8 by 24 by 10 inches per worker.
The details that fail an inspection outright
Sleeping quarters must be partitioned from the rest of the facility with full walls and doors, and where they are not, the guide states it is an automatic fail. The only exception is hotel-style accommodation designed for a maximum of two people per room. Every bedroom needs an outside window or exterior door openable from the inside without keys, tools or special knowledge, giving an unobstructed opening of at least 0.35 square metres with no dimension under 380 millimetres, which the guide ties to BC Building Code Division B article 9.9.10. Beds sit at least 20 centimetres off the floor with at least 75 centimetres between them, and each worker needs enclosed storage for personal effects.
What that means if you are specifying a building
Because occupancy is arithmetic, a building can be designed backwards from the number of workers it needs to hold: floor area and bedroom volume set a ceiling, and fixture counts have to keep pace with it rather than trail behind. The two that most often bind are bedroom volume and the fixture ratios, because a plan that satisfies square footage can still be capped by having one shower too few. Bedroom partitioning and egress openings are structural decisions, not finishing decisions, which is why they are cheap in a factory drawing and expensive on site.
One boundary worth stating plainly: the inspection belongs to the employer and the inspector, not to the supplier. We can build to a specification and hand over the documentation, and we would not tell any grower that a unit arrives pre-approved. The inspector on WALI's list decides that, on your site, against the form.
02 — Where to go next
03 — Sources
Each figure above links to the authority it came from.
Government of Canada, Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program requirements: employers must provide housing that is adequate, suitable and affordable as defined by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and free return transportation between accommodation and workplace; the housing inspection must be conducted by a provincial, territorial or municipal authority or an authorized private inspector and must have taken place in the 8 months before the LMIA application is received; under no circumstances can employers recover these costs from the temporary foreign worker
canada.caWALI Worker Housing: SAWP and Agricultural Stream applications must include a housing inspection form, all applicants must use the BC Agriculture Council housing inspection form, inspectors are chosen from WALI's approved list, and inspections moved to an electronic format through the WALI Employer Portal on 1 August 2023
walicanada.caGuidelines for Seasonal Housing for Temporary Farm Workers in BC, version 26-1 (March 2026): maximum occupancy derived from living space divided by 80 square feet, bedroom volume divided by 300 cubic feet, bed count, toilets, showers and bathroom sinks multiplied by 7, washer and dryer pairs multiplied by 10 and residential fridges multiplied by 6; sleeping quarters not partitioned with full walls and doors are an automatic fail; bedroom egress opening of at least 0.35 square metres with no dimension less than 380 millimetres per BC Building Code Division B 9.9.10; beds at least 20 centimetres off the floor and 75 centimetres apart; the result category pass with conditions has been removed as Service Canada no longer accepts it
walicanada.caProvince of British Columbia: Employment and Social Development Canada published 12 requirements for employer-provided accommodations in federal temporary foreign worker programs in 2022, covering agriculture, primary processing and seafood processing; the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Agriculture and Food ran engagement from May to June 2025 to gather data on current worker housing conditions and the extent to which the federal minimum requirements were already being met
www2.gov.bc.ca
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