We take this call from both sides, often about the same building within a week of each other.
The short answer: in British Columbia pest control in a rental is the landlord's responsibility by default, and the exception is narrower than most people assume.
What the Act says
Section 32 of the Residential Tenancy Act requires a landlord to provide and maintain residential property in a state of repair that complies with health, safety and housing standards required by law, and that makes the unit suitable for occupation given its age, character and location. The Residential Tenancy Branch policy guidelines treat insect and pest control as landlord responsibility, in the same category as other major maintenance.
The same section puts an obligation on the tenant, which is to maintain reasonable health, cleanliness and sanitary standards throughout the rental unit and the residential property they have access to.
Those two sentences are where almost every dispute we hear about lives.
The default, in plain terms
Mice in the walls, rats in the crawlspace, cockroaches in the building, bed bugs in a unit. The landlord arranges and pays for a licensed operator. That holds whether or not the tenant was the one who noticed, and it holds for bed bugs specifically, which is the case people most often assume works differently.
It holds in a strata too. The tenant deals with the landlord. The landlord deals with the strata over anything in common property. None of that second part is the tenant's to sort out.
The exception
A landlord can be relieved of the cost where the infestation resulted from the tenant's own behaviour, and where they can actually show it. Rubbish left uncollected inside the unit, food left out at scale, hoarding conditions that make treatment impossible, an untreated pet flea problem.
What the exception is not is a general argument that the tenant must have brought it in. Bed bugs arrive on furniture, on luggage, and through shared walls. German cockroach spreads through a building along plumbing and electrical runs. In a multi-unit building neither can be traced to one suite with any confidence, and "it started in yours" is a guess rather than a finding.
The question the Branch is really asking has two halves. Did the tenant breach the cleanliness obligation, and did that breach cause this problem. Both have to hold.
The part that catches both sides out
One suite treated on its own almost never works.
Cockroaches and bed bugs move. Treat 304 and leave 204, 404, 303 and 305 alone, and the population walks along the plumbing chase or the wall void, waits out the residual, and comes back. The tenant reasonably concludes the treatment failed. The landlord reasonably concludes they paid for nothing. Both are right, and the cause is neither of them. It is the scope.
For building work we quote adjoining and stacked suites as one job, with per-unit paperwork so a council or a property manager holds a record for each. It costs more on the day and a good deal less over a year.
If you are a tenant being told your unit will be done on its own, ask what is happening either side of you. If you are a landlord being quoted for one suite in a building with a history, ask the same question.
What a tenant can do when nothing happens
Report it in writing. Email, text, anything with a date on it. A verbal report to a building manager is the thing that later turns into a disagreement about whether it was ever mentioned.
Keep a record. Dates, photographs, what you were told and by whom.
Give the landlord a fair chance to act. What counts as fair scales with severity, and rats in a kitchen is not the same as a wasp nest at the far end of the yard.
If nothing happens, apply to the Residential Tenancy Branch for dispute resolution. You can ask for an order that the landlord comply with the Act. TRAC, the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre, publishes a plain-language guide to bed bugs and other infestations, and it is the best free starting point in the province.
Do not withhold rent over it. That is a separate breach and it will damage your own case.
What a landlord should do
Use a licensed operator and keep the report. A signed service report showing the areas inspected, the product used with its concentration and PCP number, and the follow-up date is the document that settles a dispute, and it is what the Branch will want to see. Ours are described on the residential page.
Fix the building fault. Most rodent problems in a rental come down to one unsealed penetration, and closing it is cheaper than treating the same suite three times.
Prepare the tenant properly. Cockroach, bed bug and flea treatments fail more often from unprepared rooms than from anything to do with the product, and passing on the preparation sheet is the landlord's job rather than something for the tenant to guess at.
The honest limit of this post
This is general information and not legal advice. If a dispute is already live, the Residential Tenancy Branch and TRAC are the authorities on it.
What we can tell you is which situation you are actually in, because that usually comes down to the species and how it is distributed through the building. The cockroach and bed bug guides explain why the suite next door decides the outcome, and the commercial page covers how we handle multi-unit buildings and the per-unit paperwork a council needs.