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Watch · 8 minutes

Nineteen graphs. One record.

What the last eight years have cost the District of North Vancouver, and how this council’s record compares with its neighbours. Every figure comes from a public document, and each one is linked below.

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Captions are on the player’s menu. Every graph is set out below with its source, so the page also works as the transcript.

Part one: the wastewater plant

Bar chart of the plant’s estimated cost: $700 million in 2013, $1.06 billion in 2021, $3.86 billion in 2024.

Graph 1 of 19

The plant: $700 million, then $3.86 billion

Metro Vancouver first estimated the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant at $700 million, in 2013. After the contract was renegotiated in 2019 the estimate passed $1 billion, a figure that was not made public until 2021. In March 2024 it became $3.86 billion: about five and a half times the first estimate.

Metro Vancouver’s staff ran the project. An elected board approved its contracts and its budgets, and the District of North Vancouver has a seat at that board.

Sources

The wastewater record
Two bars: the North Shore’s 6.9% share of the region’s population beside its 37% share of the $2.8-billion overrun.

Graph 2 of 19

Seven per cent of the people, 37% of the overrun

On 31 May 2024 the regional sewerage board decided how the $2.8-billion overrun would be shared. The North Shore has about 7% of Metro Vancouver’s people: 215,251 of 3.1 million. It was assigned 37% of the overrun.

Source

Two bars: the 12% Metro Vancouver’s staff recommended beside the 37% the board voted for.

Graph 3 of 19

Metro’s own staff said 12%. The board voted 37%.

It did not have to be that number. Metro Vancouver’s own staff put forward a model in which the other three sewerage areas carried 88% of the extra cost and the North Shore 12%. The board defeated it and, after several more votes, settled on 37%.

A District councillor told the board the split was unfair, and she was right. But the objection came after the cost had already reached billions. The time for hard questions was years earlier.

Source

Bar chart of what a household pays toward the plant by 2029: North Shore $656, Vancouver $139, Fraser $90, Lulu Island West $83.

Graph 8 of 19

$656 here. $139 in Vancouver.

By 2029, when the phase-in ends, a North Shore household is projected to pay about $656 a year toward this one plant, against $139 in Vancouver, $90 in Fraser and $83 in Lulu Island West. Same plant.

Metro Vancouver has not published these per-household figures in a document that can be linked. They come from reporting of the board’s decision of 31 May 2024 and are cited to that decision.

Source

The household table
A large 92%: the share of Metro Vancouver’s directors who back a single sewerage area. Cost-sharing decided: none. Date it takes effect: not set.

Graph 9 of 19

Even the region now says the split was wrong

In July 2026 about 92% of Metro Vancouver’s directors supported a staged move to a single sewerage area, with one rate for the whole region. That is support recorded in a governance review, not a decision: no cost-sharing arrangement has been settled and no date has been set.

Last checked 2026-09-17. A formal decision by the board would make this out of date.

Source

A timeline: March 2024, the $3.86-billion estimate is made public; May 2024, the board assigns the North Shore 37%; later in 2024, District council asks the Province for a public inquiry and none is called; March 2026, the two North Vancouver mayors take it to the Premier; October 17, 2026, you vote; January 2027, Metro Vancouver’s own review is due.

The dates

Two and a half years. No inquiry. No findings before you vote.

The $3.86-billion estimate became public in March 2024. Later that year District council asked the Province for a public inquiry, and the Province did not call one. In March 2026, two years after the estimate and seven months before this election, the mayors of the District and the City took the request to the Premier in person.

There is still no inquiry, and the 37% has not changed. The only review under way is Metro Vancouver’s own, and it reports by the end of January 2027: after the election. Saying the bill is unfair is not the same as getting it fixed.

Sources

Who failed North Shore taxpayers?
Bar chart of the District’s sewer levy: $28.8 million in 2025, $35.2 million in the 2026 budget, $52.8 million projected for 2030.

Graph 10 of 19

What the District owes Metro Vancouver for sewer service

Meanwhile the District’s own payment to Metro Vancouver for sewer service keeps growing: $28.8 million in 2025, $35.2 million in the 2026 budget and $52.8 million projected for 2030. That is up 83% in five years, about $24 million a year more.

That is the outcome, on this mayor’s and this council’s watch. Residents are entitled to ask what they knew, when they knew it and how they voted.

The District’s plan calls this “an increase of 183%”. $52.8 million is 183% of $28.8 million, which is an increase of 83%.

Source

Part two: the District beside its neighbours

Paired bars for the same two houses: municipal tax $3,559 in Burnaby and $4,037 in the District; fees and parcel taxes $1,686 in Burnaby and $2,571 in the District.

Graph 12 of 19

Most of the gap is fees, not tax

Most of that gap is not the tax rate. General municipal tax is $4,037 in the District and $3,559 in Burnaby. Fees are $2,571 in the District against $1,686 in Burnaby, counting Burnaby’s $765 in parcel taxes. About $520 of that $885 difference is Metro Vancouver’s sewer charge. The rest is the District’s own.

Sources

Your tax bill versus Burnaby’s
Line chart from 2018 to 2026, 2018 = 100: utilities up 59%, property tax up 37%.

Graph 13 of 19

The bill that rose faster than the tax, eight budgets running

Fees get far less debate than the tax rate. In every one of the District’s last eight budgets, water, sewer and garbage rose faster than property tax: utilities up 59% since 2018, tax up 37%. A single-family home paid $1,920 in 2022 and $2,571 in 2026. Much of the rise is Metro Vancouver’s charges.

Source

Two bars: property tax up 11.5% over 2019 to 2022, the first term, and 23.0% over 2023 to 2026, the second.

Graph 14 of 19

The second term raised taxes twice as fast as the first

Same mayor, eight budgets. Over the four budgets of 2019 to 2022 the approved increases compound to about 11.5%. Over 2023 to 2026 they compound to 23%: twice as fast. The 2020 increase was set at 3% and cut to 2% for COVID-19; counted at 3%, the second term is still 77% higher.

Source

Bar list of how much faster each council raised taxes this term than last: Surrey 2.23 times, District of North Vancouver 2.01, Burnaby 1.94, Port Coquitlam 1.85, City of North Vancouver 1.54, New Westminster 1.50, West Vancouver 1.29, Vancouver 0.95.

Graph 15 of 19

Of eight councils, only one sped up more

Was every council doing that? Of the eight Metro Vancouver councils with a complete public record for both terms, only Surrey’s increases sped up more than the District’s, and Surrey was paying for a new police force.

This measures the change, not the level: Vancouver and New Westminster raised taxes more in total. Some councils’ figures come from news reports of the council vote rather than the council’s own document.

Source

Bar list of 2024 municipal spending per person: West Vancouver $3,879, Vancouver $3,076, New Westminster $2,940, District of North Vancouver $2,533, Delta $2,525, City of North Vancouver $2,431, Richmond $2,401, Burnaby $2,250, Coquitlam $2,081, Surrey $1,646.

Graph 16 of 19

The fourth-highest spender of seventeen

Where does the money go? The Fraser Institute compares what the seventeen largest municipal governments in Metro Vancouver spend for each resident, from the Province’s own statistics. In 2024 the District spent $2,533 a person: fourth-highest of the seventeen, $283 more than Burnaby and $887 more than Surrey.

The figures are adjusted for inflation and cover each municipality’s own spending only. Ten of the seventeen are shown.

Source

The fourth-highest spender in Metro Vancouver
Paired bars of the increase needed to maintain services against the one approved or planned: 9.0% and 5.5% in 2025, 7.5% and 3.53% in 2026, 5.6% and 3.5% in 2027.

Graph 17 of 19

3.53% this year. Service reductions every year for five.

The 2026 tax increase was 3.53%. The District’s own plan says keeping services as they were would have needed 7.5%; the year before, 9% was needed and 5.5% approved. The plan says, on page 27: “Reductions in service are expected every year of this five-year plan.” Fourth-highest spending, and service reductions. The plan does not list which services.

Source

The tax record
Bar chart of the infrastructure levy: 1% in 2022, 0% in 2023 when it was suspended, 0.5% in 2024, 1% in 2025, 1.5% in 2026.

Graph 18 of 19

The infrastructure levy: suspended in 2023, rebuilt since

Part of each tax increase is set aside to replace roads, pipes and buildings. Council suspended it in 2023 to hold that year’s increase to 5.25%, then brought it back: 0.5% in 2024, 1% in 2025, 1.5% in 2026. The District now says what it owns would cost $4.6 billion to replace. In 2020 the figure was $2.3 billion.

Sources

The tax record
Bar list of net new homes against the Province’s two-year target: Victoria 166%, Port Moody 129%, Delta 104%, Vancouver 85%, District of North Vancouver 81%, Saanich 78%, Abbotsford 67%, Kamloops 62%, West Vancouver 37%, Oak Bay 26%.

Graph 19 of 19

The housing target: 81 per cent

The Province set the District a two-year target of 1,021 net new homes. It delivered 832, or 81%: fifth of the ten municipalities in its group. In the second year it completed 493 homes and demolished 157: one home torn down for every three finished.

The group is the Province’s first ten target municipalities, not Metro Vancouver. Burnaby, Surrey and the City of North Vancouver received their orders later, so their two years are not up.

Sources

The housing target: 81 per cent

None of these numbers are ours

They belong to Metro Vancouver, the District, the Province, the Fraser Institute and CBC’s report of the vote, and each is linked above. If you find one that is wrong, tell us and it will be corrected here.

General voting day is Saturday, October 17, 2026.

How and where to vote Sources and documents

Last updated 2026-09-19.