Delta Wants Open Answers on the Massey Tunnel Risk

When a multibillion-dollar crossing replacement collapses back into retendering, “trust us” is not an infrastructure plan.

The Massey Tunnel file has moved from procurement trouble to public-safety scrutiny. On June 30, CityNews reported that Delta Mayor George Harvie is pressing the B.C. government after safety concerns were raised by Cross Fraser Partnership, the contractor team whose path to the main Fraser River Tunnel construction contract was terminated.

Harvie’s request is not complicated. He wants provincial officials to answer whether building the new immersed-tube tunnel deeper beside the existing George Massey Tunnel can be done safely, and he wants those answers in an open session of Delta council. According to CityNews, Harvie said the issue involved finding a solution to risk around the existing tunnel while the new one is built beside it, including concern about possible slippage.

Those are serious concerns, and they should be treated carefully: they are concerns reported by the mayor and attributed to the contractor dispute, not a finding that the old tunnel is unsafe today. But the province cannot ask commuters, truckers, port users and Delta residents to accept vague reassurance on a crossing this important.

The official project is enormous. The Highway 99 Tunnel Program says the old George Massey Tunnel opened in 1959, no longer meets regional needs or modern seismic standards, and is supposed to be replaced by a toll-free, eight-lane immersed-tube tunnel. The province’s own June 15 release said B.C. could not reach final commercial terms with Cross Fraser Partnership and would use a built-in termination option to retender remaining work.

Transportation Minister Mike Farnworth’s government framed that move as a way to get best value and improve competition. That may be the government’s explanation, but it is not the whole accountability question. If a contractor raised safety-risk concerns significant enough to become part of the mayor’s public demand for answers, British Columbians deserve to know what was raised, what independent engineering advice says, and how the retender will manage the risk.

The cost picture has already shaken public confidence. Earlier CityNews reporting cited Delta Coun. Dylan Kruger’s claim that costs could reach roughly $11 billion, while MLA Ian Paton warned they could climb higher. The province still presents the replacement as opening in 2030, but that schedule now sits beside a terminated contractor path, a retender, and a local mayor asking for open answers.

David Eby’s NDP should send the responsible officials to Delta council, publish a plain-language engineering and procurement update, and stop hiding behind process words. The public does not need theatre. It needs the facts: what risk was identified, who reviewed it, what changed, what it will cost, and whether 2030 remains real.