Opposition MLAs teamed up to defeat the B.C. government’s efforts to allow construction union “raids” every summer when the NDP had a minority three years ago, but they could only question the costs and consequences as the amendments were moved through the B.C. legislature this week.

Prince George-Mackenzie MLA Mike Morris asked why the NDP was so determined to allow construction unions annual raiding rights, after projects like the Port Mann bridge and the Canada Line in Vancouver were built successfully without strict union rules. He connected the effort to the NDP’s restriction of large public construction to 19 favoured unions that have long supported their party.

“Is it to bring more unions into the government-approved union realm?” Morris asked in debate May 5. “Or is it to break the unions that are currently resisting government?”

Shuswap MLA Greg Kyllo, the B.C. Liberal labour critic, described a highway widening project in his constituency that is subject to the NDP’s “community benefits agreement” that forces all workers to join one of 19 mostly U.S.-based unions. The project went $20 million over its $160 million budget, even after the length of the widening was reduced by almost half from the original 6.1 km, he said.

A new hospital for Cowichan Lake was subject to the union restrictions and the provincial agency Infrastructure B.C. found a 23 per cent increase as a result, Kyllo said. Former transportation minister Claire Trevena said the union preference would only add seven per cent to the cost of public construction, with a new B.C. Institute of Technology campus being the latest project subject to it.

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