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To the Editor,

The recent �ȵ���� article on the BC Building Trades’ campaign defending Community Benefit Agreements repeats a familiar and misleading script, that CBAs and PLAs ensure B.C. workers build B.C. infrastructure, train the next generation and help address labour shortages. That framing may be politically useful, but it leaves out key facts.

The real question is whether the Building Trades’ preferred labour model is the only way to deliver local hiring, apprenticeship and workforce stability on public projects. It is not.

When the Building Trades claim these agreements ensure “B.C. workers build B.C. infrastructure,” they omit a critical point: the BTUs represent only about 15 per cent of B.C.’s construction labour force.

Yet these projects must be built under terms dictated by the BTU system. Workers must work through that prescribed structure and contractors must use labour assigned through the Building Trades hiring hall to participate.

Presenting that arrangement as neutral or broadly inclusive is misleading. It is government using procurement policy to entrench one preferred labour regime while presenting it as fairness.

The same is true of the apprenticeship argument. It is inaccurate to imply that training begins and ends with the Building Trades. Apprenticeship happens across the industry, including through unionized contractors and labour partners outside the BTU orbit. Government can require apprenticeship participation on public projects without forcing workers and employers into one preferred structure.

The labour-shortage argument is no more convincing. If labour is scarce, the obvious response is to widen the pool, not funnel participation through a single labour system. Yet that is exactly what this model does. It reduces bidder participation, increases costs and slows project delivery — the predictable result of a procurement regime that narrows labour flexibility and competition.

Those consequences are becoming harder to ignore as the NDP government now “repaces” major capital projects under growing fiscal pressure.

Neither is it credible to suggest that criticism of this regime is anti-union. PCA is pro-union. Our labour partner, CLAC, is a union. Together, PCA contractors and our labour partner have helped build major pieces of British Columbia’s infrastructure over the past two decades, including the Port Mann Bridge, the South Fraser Perimeter Road and, through Kiewit, the Sea-to-Sky Highway.

British Columbians deserve public infrastructure built under rules that are fair, open and competitive, not under a system presented as community benefit but designed to favour one politically preferred labour bloc.

Sincerely,
Dan Baxter
Regional Director, B.C., PCA Canada