Don't count on Ottawa to bail out Metro on sewage plant fiasco, warns North Van MP

North Vancouver MP Jonathan Wilkinson said Tuesday Metro Vancouver shouldn’t count on Ottawa to bail out the regional government, after it was revealed last week cost estimates for the problem-plagued North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant have quadrupled, to $3.86 billion.

Metro Vancouver released the updated costs for the sewage treatment plant project March 22, revealing the revised project costs had grown over $2.8 billion from the last budget of $1.06 billion in 2021.

The new cost projections come after a special task force was struck to examine problems facing the project and make recommendations to the Metro board, which approved the new budget in a closed-door meeting Friday morning.

North Shore taxpayers are expected to be on the hook for a substantial part of that.

In a worst-case scenario, the increased costs to “average” households in North and West Vancouver has been pegged at $725 per year for the next 30 years.

“Clearly the cost escalation is quite incredible,” Wilkinson said on Tuesday, noting the original cost estimate was under $800 million.

He added the costs are “far higher” than for similar projects in other areas.

But Wilkinson said it would be wrong to assume senior levels of government are riding to the financial rescue.

The cost escalation “is not the responsibility of the federal government,” he said, noting federal contributions to date have been based on an assumption of reasonable cost estimates.

“I do think on a go-forward basis that it will be important that Metro Vancouver can be very forthright with people, particularly on the North Shore, about how we went from something that was less than $800 million to now something that is close to $4 billion and is going to add significant amounts of costs to the taxpayer's bill,” he said.

There are municipalities across the country building similar infrastructure projects, Wilkinson said, and it would be “very challenging” to bail out one government for cost overruns without being expected to bail out others.

“The federal government can’t be in the position and the province can’t be in the position, that every time there’s a cost overrun on a project that we’ve actually participated in funding, that somehow we’re on the hook,” he said. “I don’t think that they should be looking to the province or the federal government for additional funds.”

Wilkinson said it’s understandable that local taxpayers will have questions about the project, but those should be directed to local politicians.

“This is a huge challenge,” he said. “And I think most folks are shocked by the cost escalation in the project. But this is a Metro project.”