In the wake of the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant boondoggle, former premier Mike Harcourt has a novel suggestion: Amalgamation, and lots of it. Harcourt argues that if there were fewer municipalities bickering at the board table, Metro Vancouver would produce better decisions.
An independent governance review recently commissioned by Metro did find that with 41 directors from 23 local jurisdictions, the regional authority had become “large and unwieldy” with “increasing tensions and political differences.”
Redrawing political boundaries is a bold suggestion. We honestly don’t know if the treatment plant would be $3 billion over budget if the Tri-Cities were just a Uni-City, or if there was just one mayor for all of the North Shore.
But we believe decision-making outcomes can only be as good as the basic governance structures they’re built on. And for more than 100 years, the North Shore has been carved up into such nonsensical jurisdictions, it makes every decision suspect.
No matter how much sense it makes, any talk of amalgamation on the North Shore always ends at City of North Vancouver council where opponents have always cited Metro Vancouver as the shining example of how co-operation was better than unification. Today, Metro faces a revolt from some of those same leaders.
When it comes to the places we shop, the bridges we rely on and the trails we hike, we on the North Shore are already in fact one community, no matter where the arbitrary lines were drawn. If we’re going to talk about amalgamation, this would be a good place to start.
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