The company overseeing British Columbia’s largest P3 transportation project, the $1.9 billion Canada Line (formerly RAV), has once again missed a target date for public disclosure of critical information related to the project’s finances.

Canada Line Rapid Transit Inc., a subsidiary of TransLink, originally promised that the Final Project Report (Procurement Phase), together with the Concession Agreement and Auditor General’s report on the deal, would be disclosed to the public by the end of 2005. On January 3, 2006, it announced that the new target date for the release of these documents would be the end of January. When January 31st came and went, the new deadline was the end of February. On February 15, 2006, Chair Larry Bell and CEO Jane Bird assured the public that the reports, including a copy of the Concession Agreement, would be available “soon”.

As of today, March 1, 2006, these critical documents are still being withheld from the public, which is on the hook for a huge chunk of the project’s multi-billion dollar price tag.

What’s going on here? Why are taxpayers being kept in the dark? Can the public have any confidence that the 17km transit line will be delivered on time and on budget when management has missed three successive target dates for delivering documents?

The spokesman for the Canada Line is Alan Dever: 604-484-7287.