Let me pretend to withhold judgment—to play the polite columnist—while every nerve in me is screaming.

And, if I may be frank at the outset, let me concede it’s tough to bite one’s lip, to try to see the other side, and to keep the fingers from carving them a new one on the keyboard that this moment faces me. So scandalous, so betraying, so lacking in basic respect is this situation of my money—mine, among the hundreds of thousands of Metro Vancouver taxpayers—that I can barely contain the bile.

The news this week that the BC NDP government has decided not—repeat not—to prompt a public inquiry to help us understand, at least for many years to come, if ever, how the budget of the North Shore Wastewater Treatment plant project metastasized is, well, a test of one’s better self.

That it reeks of self-preservation, that it skewers public trust, that it dresses cowardice in condescending bureaucratese, begs one’s senses to convulse. It’s all I can do to contain physically.

In that the project has grown wildly unwieldy—$3.86 billion, more than fivefold its original estimate, many years delayed, ridden with litigation, about to impose upon property owners a most horrid expense for the next three, count them three, decades—one could be excused for raising a hand to ask how, when, why and whither.

But it appears the denizens of the provincial government have decided that, when Metro Vancouver deigned not to dig into the details through an independent inquiry—at least until the lawsuit from the original contractor and the countersuit from the region are done, likely next decade—it would not move to answer our wishes.

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Now, continuing in my pledge to withhold judgment, the language in the determination to not do what Premier David Eby only weeks ago indicated he would, might strike skeptics as a tad circular. Try to follow.

Tara Faganello, the assistant deputy minister of housing and municipal affairs, wrote to a citizen’s group on the North Shore to say there would be no inquiry. Rather, she said, the public can await the settlement of the legal fracas. 

“To warrant that degree of provincial intervention, the matter would need to be beyond the capacity or willingness of the local government to remedy and fundamentally affect the viability of a local government or have serious consequences for the local government system,” she wrote. “While I recognize the project has an impact with Metro Vancouver Regional District, it does not have ramifications that translate to the broader local government system.”

So, if I may turn it back to us, once again without judgment: it appears we need to be ashamed to suggest that we need to know how our wallets were raided with hundreds of dollars in extra fees we now face each year, manifested without any notification. We need to give some space to the politicians and executives so they may be seek reelection without the scent of sewage on the hands they will shake and the pension cheques they will one day cash. Terrible of us to suggest otherwise.

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It would be wrong, it seems, to suggest the luxury of a timely public inquiry to expose systemic failure and to prevent repetition. It appears the criteria to merit any imminent effort for the public to know are well beyond this multibillion-dollar overrun because, well, it doesn’t have “serious consequences” beyond little old us.

How childish for us to think that uncontrolled costs, broken promises and deferred accountability might have broader “ramifications.” How silly to think that an inquiry might be of use to other jurisdictions. How naive it was to not understand that this government wouldn’t use the Local Government Act, wouldn’t see how it is built for precisely moments like this, to inject itself into the matter unless everything, all over the place, was broken.

Of course, of course, we can wait. Let the lawsuits linger. Let the testimony burrow into years of fruitless consequence. Let us risk the possibility of sealed documents, gag orders, secretive settlements and non-disclosure clauses to cloak the crazy costs. Let us await the public accounting until the legal outcome, rather than let an inquiry affect it. Let us accustom ourselves and grow complacent about another government bill to keep our water—and the reputations of those who guided the project—clean.

Yes, let’s, shall we?

The province is wrong, an inquiry is necessary now that invokes subpoena power with a full view of contracts and decisions, and anything less abrogates its duty. There. Judgment.

Kirk LaPointe is a Lodestar Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism. He is vice-president in the office of the chair at Fulmer & Company.