There are options to decrease the number of directors from 41 to 23, 34 or 36
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With 41 directors, Metro Vancouver’s governing board is big, and set to get bigger.
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An effort to change the size and structure of the regional government is underway after an analysis prompted by the massive cost overruns on the North Shore wastewater treatment plant project determined there was a need to “streamline” the board, which is made up of elected officials from 23 member jurisdictions.
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A 2025 report by Deloitte offered five options, including the status quo. Doing nothing would mean the board would remain at 41 directors, growing to 49 next year, and 52 by 2031 — based on projected population growth.
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Sunrise
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That is not really an option, said Vancouver Coun. Lisa Dominato, chair of Metro Vancouver’s governance committee. There is consensus that the regional government needs to consider reducing the size of the board, in addition to slowing its growth.
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She said the committee expects to make a formal recommendation to the board by July. The goal is to have any changes approved before municipal elections in October.
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What are the options?
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To evaluate the options being considered, it helps to understand how the number of directors (and the votes each one has) is determined. Each member jurisdiction has at least one director with at least one vote. Jurisdictions gets one additional vote for every 20,000 people (or fewer) in the community. Once a director has five votes (meaning the community has reached 100,000 residents), a second director is added.
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The options deal with how to bring the number of directors, described as “unwieldy” in a recent Metro Vancouver report, down to 23, 34 or 36.
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The first option is to assign one member per jurisdiction. Twenty-three member jurisdictions equals 23 directors. Simple, but not ideal for having a “breadth of perspectives and experience at the table,” according to the report. Surrey would lose five directors and Vancouver would lose six. As a result, three directors would hold the majority of the votes at the table versus the current 16.
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Another option is to cap the number of directors at a maximum of three per jurisdiction. That would slow growth, although the board would remain quite large at 34 directors. It would also “concentrate influence in a single representative per jurisdiction.”
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The other options deal with changing the way votes are distributed. The population threshold per vote could be increased from 20,000 to 25,000, so all member jurisdictions under 25,000 would have one vote and additional votes would be added at 25,000 population intervals. In this case, five jurisdictions would have one fewer director, while 12 jurisdictions would have fewer votes. The total number of directors would be 36.
