Ottawa promises $250M for Richmond wastewater plant
Posted March 21, 2025 2:32 pm.
Last Updated March 21, 2025 5:30 pm.
The federal government is handing out $250 million in funding to help build the Iona Wastewater Treatment plant in Richmond through the Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund.
The funding will come over five years and the province says it’s negotiated terms with the feds that will support the construction of new homes and infrastructure.
New Westminster Coun. Daniel Fontaine says at face value the funding is good news, but he thinks Ottawa should have required the province to conduct a public inquiry into massive cost overruns at the North Shore Wastewater Treatment plant project.
“The federal government has huge leverage over Metro Vancouver to request that there be an independent inquiry, or they have the federal Auditor General come in and to review that — and to provide the public answers before they start handing out another quarter-billion dollars to this organization,” said Fontaine.
A year ago this week, Metro Vancouver announced the North Shore project price tag had ballooned from around $700 million to $3.86 billion.
The facility is supposed to replace the Lions Gate Wastewater Treatment Plant, which has been operating since the 1960s and is out of service life.
In March last year, the regional district announced the price jump after it was forced to switch contractors.
The regional district argues it has “consistently shared information with the Board, the media, and the public about the project and the reasons for the cost increase.”
It points to a webpage for the project, a monthly newsletter, and a media event it held following the announcement of the cost increase.
“Some information related to the new plant has been shared in closed meetings due to ongoing litigation that could result in the recovery of hundreds of millions of public dollars in damages from the previous contractor,” Metro Vancouver explained.
In July, the district’s board approved an independent review it says is now underway. But Fontaine thinks the review is incorrectly named.
“First of all, it’s not independent. So it’s like saying you have an independent review of your own personal activities. You set the scope of the review, you hire the person doing the independent review. You get to get the report first before the public sees it. That’s not independent,” Fontaine argued.
He says the only truly independent review would run through the Local Government Act, conducted by the Auditor General. As it is, Fontaines says the district’s review could yield no public results.
“There can be an out-of-court settlement with a non-disclosure agreement between the two parties, and all that information will be shut in a vault, and nobody will ever be more aware, or there will be very little openness and transparency about what actually transpired to create that massive cost overrun. And I’m worried about that.”
Fontaine says he’s worried the federal funding for Iona could lead to a repeat of all the same mistakes.
“We’ve seen this show before. They did this on the North Shore wastewater treatment plant. Federal government came in, gave a contribution as a down payment to help cover a third of the cost, and then the cost just ballooned out of control to $4 billion,” He explained.
“You would think that the federal government today, with their announcement of the $250 million would put conditions on that $250 million because they have huge leverage, because they’re they’re contributing so much money. And yet, my understanding is there’s no conditions on the money.”
