SURREY, B.C. – The Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of BC (ICBA) is endorsing John Rustad’s BC Conservatives party as British Columbia goes to the polls on Oct. 19.
ICBA’s board of directors voted Sept. 11 to endorse Rustad and the Conservatives citing “concerns over the NDP’s ongoing mismanagement of B.C. by every significant metric used to measure economic performance and quality of life,” an ICBA release said.
“As I visit communities across the province to meet contractors, small businesses and their workers, the voices desperately calling for change are everywhere. In a spring poll done for ICBA, 76 per cent of British Columbians agreed that they feel ‘so many things are broken in B.C. right now,’” ICBA president and CEO Chris Gardner said in a statement.
“It’s a shocking number. We need change in so many areas, it’s hard to know where to start – but only John Rustad and the BC Conservatives have the fresh thinking and new ideas to make it happen.”
The pace of residential construction was top of mind for Gardner, who said homes are not being built at a fast enough pace.
The release also cited the B.C. government’s use of community benefit agreements (CBAs) as an impediment to infrastructure construction.
“Eighty-five per cent of construction workers are cut out of infrastructure projects built under the NDP’s broken CBA model and workers have been stripped of the democratic right to a secret ballot vote in union drives,” the release said.
Gardner also pointed to a Business Council of British Columbia analysis that stated since 2022, private sector jobs have increased by 5,300 while government jobs went up by 63,800, “an astounding 12 to one ratio that’s simply not sustainable.”
“Our standard of living is now in sharp decline, and B.C. finds itself at the bottom of the pack in North America. What the NDP is doing is not working,” he said.
“We have enormous potential and could be doing so much better in B.C. The BC Conservatives are providing an opportunity for us to press the reset button on the challenges that the NDP have either ignored, made worse, or proven incapable of solving.”
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