BURST
A Delta city councillor says he’s heard from a federal government source that the cost to replace the Massey Tunnel could reach $11 billion, about triple the original estimate.
Meanwhile, the head of a Delta construction company says he, has heard the same thing from people associated with the project, which, if true, could spell trouble for its completion .
B.C. Transportation and Transit Minister Mike Farnworth said in a statement Wednesday that the government has never contemplated a cost of $11 billion for the Massey Tunnel replacement. At the same time, he didn’t dispute a report that the province is seeking $4 billion from Ottawa for the project.
“We’re having good and constructive conversations with the federal government, and they have committed their support for this project,” said Farnworth. “While I have said before that the cost has increased from the original budget, we have not contemplated or discussed an $11-billion budget.”
On Monday, the province announced that it had fired the original contractors Cross Fraser Partnership, a consortium of Bouygues Construction Canada, Fomento de construcciones y contratas Canada, and Pomerleau B.C., after the two parties had failed to reach a final construction agreement.
In 2012, the B.C. Liberals, under then-premier Christy Clark, proposed a bridge to replace the aging tunnel. John Horgan’s NDP cancelled the bridge project after they came into office in 2017 in favour of a replacement tunnel.
Originally supposed to cost $4.15 billion and be ready by 2030, the province now admits the Massey replacement is likely to cost more as it splits construction and development into multiple chunks and puts the project back out for tender.
Dylan Krueger, a Delta city councillor and 2026 mayoral candidate, said he was told by a senior official in the federal government that the province told Ottawa that the project has ballooned in cost and $4 billion in federal support is needed to complete the new, eight-lane tunnel.
“I’ve spoken with a source directly connected with the federal government, who informed me that the latest information on the project is that costs have escalated to over $11 billion and that there’s an active request for funds to the federal government for $4 billion, which is incredible, considering that was previously the entire budget for the project,” he said.
The federal government has previously offered B.C. “hundreds of millions of dollars” for the project, former Delta MP Carla Qualtrough told The Delta Optimist last year, but the province said last March that it had been asking Ottawa to cover at least half of the original $4.15-billion cost.
Even if the budget is $11 billion, some in the construction sector say that might not be enough.
John J. Miller, founder and CEO of JJM Construction in Delta, said he has spoken to people involved in the now-fired Cross Fraser Partnership consortium that said the project could cost $11 billion and that it may be in trouble no matter what the budget.
“They were still having problems getting the system to work seismically, because what happens is that the new tunnel is very close (to the existing tunnel) and it’s a lot deeper than the existing tunnel,” said Miller. “It’s a stability problem that they were facing and every time they try to solve the problem, the price went up and up.”
He believes that the province firing the Cross Fraser Partnership, which included firms experienced at building underwater tunnels including under the English Channel, will only serve to increase the cost and move the province farther away from its initial completion timeline of 2030.
In contrast, Miller said, if the province had stuck with the original 10-lane bridge idea put forward by the B.C. Liberals, it would have been finished by now and cost a lot less.
“Why don’t we go back to a bridge, a bridge we can build that for under $4 billion, and you’ve got all the approvals already in place for that?” he said. “Now the current government is going to have egg on their face.”