One voting shareholder, always — but the non-voting side has more room than most agents assume, and BC's regulator has answered the edge cases in writing that Ontario's has not.
Short answer
The voting shares belong to one person only — you, the licensed agent or broker — in every province that publishes a rule on it. Non-voting shares are the flexible part: in both Ontario and BC they can go to family members (spouse, children, and in BC's case a trust or holding corporation for them), never to an outside party. Alberta's model is structurally different again — a majority stake, not sole ownership.
BC's Real Estate Services Regulation defines the “controlling individual” as “the sole voting shareholder” of the corporation, who is also its sole director and president. Ontario Regulation 536/20 runs the same way — per RECO's own checklist, “the corporation has one single controlling shareholder… who owns ALL the equity shares.” BCFSA's FAQ answers the obvious follow-up directly: two spouses who are both licensees cannot share one PREC's voting shares — each must incorporate their own.
Both provinces route non-voting shares to family. Ontario's checklist allows them to be held “directly or indirectly by the family members (spouse, children, parents, trust for minor child)” of the controlling shareholder. BC defines an “affiliated person” the same way, and BCFSA's own FAQ goes further than Ontario's published guidance does: a step-child can be a beneficial owner, a holding corporation owned by the spouse and children can hold the non-voting shares, and that holding corporation's shares can themselves sit inside a trust for the spouse and children — three layers deep, all confirmed “yes.”
BCFSA's FAQ draws a sharp line: an affiliated person's own holding corporation faces no restriction on investing in real estate or anything else — “only the Personal Real Estate Corporation is restricted and must only conduct business by providing real estate services.” The restriction attaches to the PREC itself, not to the family members or entities that hold its non-voting shares.
RECA's Rule 50(c)(i) permits commission routing to a corporation the licensee owns “not less than fifty percent (50%)” of — a majority stake open to other owners, not Ontario's or BC's sole-voting-shareholder model. Treat this as a structurally different rule, not the same PREC concept under Alberta's name.
For what the corporation itself is allowed to hold once the ownership question is settled, see whether a PREC can hold investments.
A 30-minute call is enough to tell you whether your process holds up.
