'Mistrust and frustration': Metro Vancouver Regional District to pursue reforms | Daily Hive

'Mistrust and frustration': Metro Vancouver Regional District to pursue major governance reforms

Headquarters office of Metro Vancouver Regional District. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Metro Vancouver Regional District is moving forward with sweeping governance reforms after its board of directors — made up of the region’s mayors and select city councillors — received 49 recommendations today from an independent review led by consulting firm Deloitte Canada.

The changes aim to modernize how the regional district operates, improve decision-making, and enhance accountability across the organization.

The findings were presented at a board meeting today, prompting immediate steps to begin implementing key recommendations. These include establishing a new Governance Committee, enhancing internal auditing, and amending Board remuneration policies.

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“When I came on as Chair of the Board, I committed to ensuring the public is confident that this Board is working effectively and in their best interest,” said Mike Hurley, chair of the regional district’s board of directors and the mayor of Burnaby, in a statement.

“With the findings from this thorough and thoughtful independent Governance Review, we can now take meaningful action to strengthen how we govern and serve our region.”

The review concluded that while the regional district’s governance framework has served the region well for decades, it has grown increasingly complex and would benefit from significant structural improvements. Among the top recommendations: revisiting the board’s size and composition, consolidating standing committees, and creating a dedicated governance committee with broad regional representation.

“The Board size… has become large and unwieldy, and will only continue to grow. A new Board and Committee structure is required to provide more effective governance and oversight, to introduce a balance of professional experience, and enhance decision-making and risk management,” reads the report by Deloitte.

“There are opportunities to continue to reduce the size, composition and meeting frequency of Board Standing Committees without negatively impacting the governance of the organization.”

With that said, the consulting firm emphasized that the stipend model for elected officials attending board meetings is comparable to those in other similar public sector boards.

In 2023, total remuneration cost for board directors was $1.6 million or about 0.1 per cent of the regional district’s annual operating budget of about $1.5 billion. Municipally elected officials appointed to the regional district’s board and committees are paid $547 per board/committee meeting they attend, with this renumeration doubled to $1,094 if the meeting goes over four hours.

“There are opportunities to reduce remuneration costs. The solution, however, cannot be to reduce compensation to reflect public dissatisfaction with the governance of the board, but to improve the governance to justify the remuneration,” states the report.

Furthermore, Deloitte has found that the board of directors have become increasingly politicized, with the mayors and city councillors who sit on the board “challenged by their competing fiduciary duties to advocate for their local municipality and their regional accountability.”

As well, municipal elections held every four years can create a very high turnover of board members, resulting in the loss of institutional knowledge. This increases the need for improved onboarding and education of the new board members in a timely way after their appointment to these governance positions.

Deloitte suggests there needs to be a greater weight in professional expertise in making decisions, along with improved risk management and internal audit processes.

Much of the current acrimony with the regional district stems from the significant delays and cost overruns with the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant, which subsequently led to drastically increased media and public scrutiny over the regional district’s overall spending practices, capital projects, operations, mandates, priorities, and scope. Elected officials sitting on the board and committees have also pushed back on increased property taxes, fees, and other levies imposed by the regional district to cover its growing costs.

“The context in which the current board is operating is also very relevant. Challenges with the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant program and the subsequent funding impacts have created an environment of extreme tension within the board and with municipalities,” reads the report.

“Increasing tensions and political differences are creating a culture of heightened mistrust and frustration. The board needs to find ways to improve the efficiency of Board meetings while improving the level of respect and trust within itself and between staff and other stakeholders.”

Another comparable body in the region with the governance oversight of municipally elected officials is the Mayors’ Council, which oversees TransLink and makes key decisions primarily with long-term planning and strategies. TransLink also has a separate board of directors with professional expertise to provide the public transit authority with guidance over more technical matters.

Up until the mid-2000s, TransLink had a board of directors composed of select mayors and city councillors. The provincial government disbanded this following their disarray related to approving the SkyTrain Canada Line project, with the province subsequently appointing an independent professional board to govern TransLink, with the first iteration of the Mayors’ Council largely taking an advisory role. But by the early 2010s, through further provincial changes, the Mayors’ Council gained more authority over TransLink’s direction.

Deloitte identified five different board structures and types of membership for further consideration by the regional district, including a single representative board similar to TransLink’s Mayors’ Council (one member per municipal government in the region for a total of 23 directors), an independent board not made up of elected officials (similar to a provincial Crown corporation like BC Hydro), a capped board size (no more than 34 board of directors), a hybrid board structure (retaining the existing elected board directors, but creating separate boards for other regional district entities overseeing the water district and sewerage district), and a federated assembly (basically the status quo).

Currently, there are 41 board directors for the regional district, plus 38 for the water district and 37 for the sewerage district.

More drastic changes to how the regional district governs itself would require changes to provincial legislation.

Following today’s meeting, initial changes being pursued include the formation of a new Governance Committee to lead the implementation of the review’s recommendations — with participation from the provincial government — along with strengthening the regional district’s internal audit function, and amending the board’s remuneration policies to eliminate both double meeting fees and compensation for meetings held while travelling on regional district business.

The Governance Committee is expected to hold its first meeting in July 2025.

Launched in February 2025, the Board Governance Review was a joint initiative between the regional district and provincial government, which selected Deloitte to assess the organization’s governance structure, compensation practices, and decision-making processes.

Deloitte consulted with all board members and staff of the regional district, elected officials from a number of organizations, and a recently created volunteer-based independent panel of advisors, including former B.C. Premier Glen Clark.

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