By any objective measure, the B.C. NDP government has failed spectacularly when it comes to delivering major public infrastructure. The Cowichan Hospital. The Pattullo Bridge. St. Paul’s Hospital. The Massey Tunnel replacement. The Langley SkyTrain extension. The Broadway subway line. Every one of these major projects is over budget and behind schedule — by years and sometimes by billions of dollars.
This isn’t bad luck. It’s bad leadership and part of a disturbing pattern driven by political interference, rigid ideology and a procurement system that puts politics ahead of sound public policy and the interests of B.C. taxpayers.
Let’s talk about the ideology piece of all this. For years, the NDP’s Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) framework — a deeply flawed policy that has driven many of those project cost overruns — has been sold to taxpayers as the best way to promote local hiring and expand training and employment opportunities for women, Indigenous workers and apprentices.
Really though, it’s about mandating work to the 15 per cent of construction workers who are members of the building trades unions. The other 85 per cent of construction workers who are members of different unions or not unionized are excluded — frozen out of opportunities despite their ability to deliver high-quality results and perform the work safely. You cannot build a stronger construction industry when the starting point is excluding most workers.
The decision by BC Ferries to go to a Chinese state-owned shipyard to buy four new ships shows that all the NDP government’s CBA talk of local hiring and empowering young, female and Indigenous workers was just window dressing.
It’s a stunning degree of hypocrisy, that after years of lecturing builders and contractors about the supposed virtues of CBAs, the NDP government abandoned those principles altogether for a low-cost shipbuilder in China. Gone was all the rhetoric about supporting B.C. or Canadian workers and companies — or even ones whose country shares our democratic values.
No local jobs. No Canadian supply chain. No Indigenous hires. No apprenticeship opportunities. No women in trades. No benefits for any community in this province. Just a mealy-mouthed excuse that BC Ferries made the decision independently, as if the government that is the sole shareholder in the corporation and appoints its board had no say in the matter or was unaware of the decision.
This isn’t just a bad purchase. It’s a betrayal of our workers, our values, our economy and our country.
It’s a slap in the face to the province’s skilled tradespeople. It’s a rejection of Canadian shipbuilders and their counterparts in Canada’s democratic allies in Europe and Asia, who happen to build a lot of ships. And it’s a reckless move that funnels billions in public money to a foreign, authoritarian regime that routinely violates human rights, undermines our democracy, interferes in our elections and detains Canadians without cause.
The CBA scheme piles on red tape, inflates costs, delays construction and blocks opportunities for thousands of contractors and their teams. CBAs deny hardworking men and women the chance to support their families and force taxpayers to absorb the spiraling costs of a failing system built to serve political interests, not public ones.
Despite the chronic shortage of skilled trades workers, B.C.’s construction industry has been setting records for hiring local workers, Indigenous people and women — all without government interference. But instead of building on that success, the NDP doubled down on political control, choosing coercion over collaboration. Even as the evidence of failure mounted, they dug in and refused to change course.
At a time of increasing global instability, British Columbians need a government that backs our workers, defends our industries, supports home-grown talent and expertise and invites everyone in construction to work on projects — not one that sells out everything we hold dear.
The NDP’s infrastructure record is a case study in what happens when politics is placed before people. When rhetoric replaces results. And now, the NDP has outsourced a generational building and industrial development opportunity to a communist regime that is outright hostile to our democratic and economic interests.
Facing a more complex and riskier world, this is not how you build a stronger, more prosperous province. Or a fairer one.
British Columbians deserve better.
Chris Gardner is president and CEO of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association and served on the board of directors of BC Ferries from 2008 to 2011.
