The B.C. election campaign officially began Sept. 21 and construction stakeholders have different perspectives on what’s needed for the industry once voters go to the polls Oct. 19.
The Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of British Columbia (ICBA) endorsed the BC Conservatives and its leader John Rustad on Sept. 12 and the BC Building Trades are affiliated with the provincial NDP, supporting current Premier David Eby.
ICBA president Chris Gardner said with BC United’s recent withdrawal from the race, voters now have a clear choice between the two remaining parties. Their endorsement was decided after looking at where the province is at in terms of homebuilding, infrastructure, regulatory challenges for small businesses and the state of the overall economy.
“When we look at that suite of products, on balance we believe it’s time for a change,” he said. “We believe there needs to be a focus on the practical things that will build more homes. That’s really what’s missing.
“Building more supply and bringing it to market is the key to affordability. We’re not doing that right now (due to) regulation…The permitting process during construction is full of red tape triggering delays and adding costs.”
Gardner added ICBA is endorsing the BC Conservative Party because “it comes down to where are we going directionally as a province? Are we on the right track? We don’t believe it is. We believe we’re on the wrong track and have to course correct.”
Council of Construction Associations BC president and CEO Dr. Dave Baspaly also voiced concern about regulatory headwinds and said the province has to find efficiencies to allow itself to become a competitive jurisdiction.
“That includes everything from procurement and tendering to WorkSafeBC, to make sure we’re as competitive and efficient as we can be,” he said.
Addressing the labour shortage
Brynn Bourke, executive director of the BC Building Trades, framed the affordable housing crisis in terms of a labour shortage and said highly trained workers are necessary to help solve the problem.
“We have a labour shortage. You can’t turn on a tap and have a bunch of workers enter this country and their highly skilled, understand the BC Building Code and the electrical code. What we need to do is grow workers here in B.C. We do that through trades training by investing in apprenticeship and providing training infrastructure through Skilled Trades BC and a certified and accredited trades trainer to increase capacity,” she said.
Baspaly said his organization has gone through both party platforms and supports both the NDP and BC Conservative commitment to an aggressive approach to building new housing.
He added the Conservative’s support furthering liquified natural gas (LNG) projects and building pipelines appealed to him, but “the devil’s in the details about how either party carries forward to increase the competitiveness of the province.”
Progressive Contractors Association of Canada (PCA) regional director for B.C. Dan Baxter said regardless of who wins the election his association is “obviously ready to work with whatever party would want to work with us to achieve our goals, while being mindful of current policies coming into place with the current government.
“We would like to see a liberalization of the (current) training model that seems to focus on the building trades and the union hall,” he said. “Training could be through (either) a union all or through third-party training.”
He added PCA is not looking for sweeping changes to labour law but would like to see a re-evaluation of the open period in which one union can raid another for its members.
“We used to have a three-year window when once a contract was signed a company knew it had workers on a project for those three years. That’s been changed to a one-year period,” he said.
He added changing back to a three-year window would maintain consistency with practices across Canada and would allow companies to “focus on getting things built.”
Should there be a ‘minister of construction?’
Unlike other association leaders, sees no reason to create a “minister of construction.”
“Unequivocally, that is not going to help solve any of the challenges contractors and construction workers are facing in their everyday lives,” Gardner said.
“I don’t view another department of government as being the solution to delivering major infrastructure faster and in a more cost-effective way.”
Bourke indicated the BC Building Trades understood the desire for the role in a future government but said other solutions are also possible.
“Right now there are huge components of construction that are somewhat siloed,” Bourke said, pointing to different ministries handling labour, infrastructure and advanced education. “I think there is probably a midway point that would make more sense by putting skilled trades and infrastructure together first before pulling all the threads into one super-ministry.”
Baspaly said rather than a construction minister he would prefer a broad base of support throughout provincial ministries.
“The contribution of the industry is far and wide in everything the government does from health to infrastructure to transportation…We really do stratify through all provincial ministries,” he said.
Are CBAs broken?
Gardner called for more openness and transparency to avoid cost overruns on infrastructure projects and called Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs) “broken and flawed.”
“It doesn’t make sense when there’re so much pressure to build and for more builders for the government to basically say they’ll go out to the market and procure billions for construction but we’re only going to procure it from 15 per cent of the construction workforce,” he said.
Baxter said CBAs are the PCA’s top issue and that it is “reckless for the government of the day to shut out competition on large-scale public projects.
“We want projects built as cost effectively as we can, but restricting labour supply exacerbates costs,” he said.
“The big issue is to open up competition and keep costs down. That means lower debts which can be diverted into other areas for all British Columbians.”
Bourke said the BC Building Trades is aligned with the NDP because “it has really demonstrated it cares about working people and understands the issues and concerns of construction workers,” she said.
She also cited initiatives such as community labour agreements as beneficial, “where construction workers know they’re going to be paid a good wage, have pension contributions, be part of a health and benefit plan and everyone gets paid the same,” she said.
Neither the PCA or COCA BC have endorsed either party at this time.
For more on how B.C. labour stakeholders view their election priorities listen to The Construction Record podcast here.
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