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Rob Shaw: NDP’s Massey Tunnel quagmire keeps sinking deeper

5 1
13.05.2025

After more than eight years of promises, $300 million spent and almost nothing to show for it, there’s not a lot for the NDP government to brag about when it comes to the George Massey Tunnel project.

Which is perhaps why Transportation Minister Mike Farnworth didn’t try that hard to do so when quizzed about the issue recently during his ministry’s estimates.

Farnworth had to deploy all the ducking and dodging at his discretion for more than an hour to get out of the simple and obvious questions about why the NDP government continues to slow play the Massey project, despite promising in three elections now to solve what is the largest traffic bottleneck in the province.

“We are building the right project that is approved, was requested by the region,” said Farnworth. “It will be to the right heights, the right lane widths, the right everything.”

Maybe one day. Long in the distant future beyond 2030.

But in the meantime, there’s barely a hint of any activity around the current tunnel, which links Delta to Richmond.

“Why has it taken since 2017 to move forward and get this tunnel built when nothing’s happened?” asked Delta South MLA Ian Paton.

“I drive through there several times a week, and I don’t see an excavator, I don’t see a bulldozer, I don’t see anything happening.”

“I expect construction will start in 2026, in terms of what the member is looking for — bulldozers, diggers, those kinds of things,” replied........

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