North Vancouver, B.C., mayors ask Eby for inquiry into water treatment project

NORTH VANCOUVER — Two mayors from Vancouver’s North Shore are calling for a public inquiry into the cost of a new wastewater treatment facility, along with a governance review of Metro Vancouver and a mechanism to ensure fairness in cost sharing.

A joint statement from Mayor Linda Buchanan from the City of North Vancouver and Mayor Mike Little from the North Vancouver district says they brought those requests to B.C. David Eby during a meeting on Thursday.

They say the projected cost of the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant has ballooned to $3.86 billion, up from an estimate of $700 million in 2017, and they’re calling for a “revised equitable approach to distributing those extraordinary costs.”

The mayors say North Shore households face additional annual costs of between $590 and $1,182 for the next 30 years, while some costs, including decommissioning and remediating the site of the existing treatment facility, have not yet been quantified.

Buchanan and Little say they aren’t disputing Metro Vancouver’s cost-sharing for the original budget, but the region is treating the formula “like a blank cheque.”

Representatives of the provincial and Metro Vancouver regional governments did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

“When Metro Vancouver approved its cost-sharing formula, municipalities could calculate their own costs from a defined budget and scope,” the statement from the mayors says.

“There was no open-ended commitment to absorb whatever cost overruns Metro Vancouver incurs, no matter how far a project drifts.”

The North Shore mayors say local governments in B.C. must meet strict requirements before taking on significant long-term debt.

But they say Metro Vancouver’s sewerage borrowing operates under a different framework, allowing it to “borrow and assign the debt” to municipalities.

“No direct elector vote is required from the communities that will carry that debt for a generation,” Buchanan and Little say in the statement issued Thursday.

“Our residents bear the financial burden of Metro’s borrowing decisions without the democratic safeguards that provincial law otherwise guarantees.”

The mayors say it amounts to a “fundamental accountability gap.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 5, 2026.

The Canadian Press