Every year the Ministry of Municipal Affairs publishes Schedule 704: the taxes and charges on a representative house in each municipality, using that municipality’s own typical assessed value. It is the one comparison that is not a campaign’s arithmetic, and it is the same table the Fraser Institute, the newspapers and the municipalities themselves use.
2026, representative house
- West Vancouver: $14,403 on a $3.51 million house
- Vancouver: $10,977 on a $2.51 million house
- District of North Vancouver: $9,793 on a $2.20 million house
- City of North Vancouver: $9,081 on a $2.06 million house
- Richmond: $9,010 on a $1.91 million house
- Burnaby: $8,472 on a $2.07 million house
- Coquitlam: $8,304 on a $1.70 million house
- Surrey: $7,729 on a $1.60 million house
- Delta: $7,449 on a $1.43 million house
A District homeowner pays $1,321 a year more than a Burnaby homeowner on a house worth about the same. Where does the difference come from? Not mainly from the tax rate. The general municipal tax on the two houses is $4,037 in the District and $3,559 in Burnaby, a gap of $478. The bigger gap is in user fees: $2,571 in the District against $921 in Burnaby. Even adding Burnaby’s $765 in parcel taxes, its fees come to $1,686, which is $885 less than ours.
The year-over-year change
Between 2025 and 2026 the value of the District’s representative house fell 3.4 per cent, from $2.28 million to $2.20 million. The bill on it rose 5.3 per cent, from $9,300 to $9,793. Burnaby’s bill rose 5.2 per cent over the same year. Falling values did not mean falling bills anywhere on the North Shore.
Why fees matter
A tax increase gets a public budget debate and a headline. A utility fee increase is set in a fee bylaw and arrives on a separate bill. Leaving aside New Westminster, whose fees include its own electricity utility, the District’s user fees are the second-highest of any large municipality in the region, behind only West Vancouver at $3,022. Water, sewer and solid waste are where the wastewater plant’s cost will land for thirty years, so this line is going to grow. Residents deserve to see it treated with the same scrutiny as the tax rate.
Part of that gap is not the District’s to close. Metro Vancouver’s own 2026 plan charges $952 a household for regional sewer service on the North Shore and $432 in the Fraser area, where most of Burnaby sits. That difference of about $520 is mostly the North Shore’s new wastewater treatment plant, arriving on your utility bill. The rest of the gap, about $365, is largely the District’s own.
What I would do
Put the Schedule 704 comparison in the District’s own tax newsletter every spring, list the utility fees beside the tax rate in every budget, and require a public explanation whenever a fee rises faster than the tax rate. Metro’s share of that gap is a fight for the regional table. The District’s own share is a question residents can put to this council.
Accuracy note: the representative house is each municipality’s own typical detached home, so assessed values differ; the Province’s table also includes the school, regional district, BC Assessment and Municipal Finance Authority charges, which are similar everywhere. All figures are the Province’s, unrounded, from Schedule 704 for 2026 and 2025, except the regional sewer charges, which are Metro Vancouver’s 2026 figures for a typical household rather than the representative house, so the $520 is an approximation. Burnaby sits mostly in the Fraser sewerage area, with its western edge in the Vancouver area.
Sources: Province of British Columbia — Schedule 704, taxes and charges on a representative house, 2026; Province of British Columbia — Schedule 704, 2025; Metro Vancouver — 2026 Budget and 2026–2030 Financial Plan (household impact by sewerage area, p. 4); Province of British Columbia — Municipal tax rates and tax burden (the index page for the schedules).
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