As reported in The Free Press, the first highway construction job under the B.C. NDP government’s Orwellian “community benefits agreement” has been awarded, and it is one whopping steak-and-six-salads lunch for the U.S.-based unions so revered by Premier John Horgan.

For a mere two kilometres of four-laning the Trans Canada Highway near Revelstoke, the cost soared 35 per cent in three months. That’s a jump of more than $22 million above a budget of $63 million that was announced when bids were invited in February.

The NDP government slipped this past the Vancouver media, burying it in a news release put out just before the May long weekend. It was immediately brought to my attention by a representative of the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC), the primary target of the Horgan government’s pact with the B.C. and Yukon Building Trades Council.

These guys go by such up-to-date names as the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers Lodge 359. There are 19 of them, anointed by the Horgan government as fit for taxpayer-funded construction, starting with the Pattullo Bridge replacement, the Broadway subway and a half dozen sections of the Trans Canada Highway between Kamloops and the Alberta border.

Also chosen is “Move Up,” formerly COPE 378, the B.C. Hydro office union and a key supplier of staff to the premier’s office.

Their monopoly on public construction is filled and chilled like the salad table required on a highway job. But they had a bitter setback last week when the B.C. Green Party rose up to defeat a key part of the NDP’s labour code revisions, the one that allowed construction union raids every summer.

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