Horgan promises to pay back unions for support

[Rwede]

Vaughn Palmer: Horgan likely to make good on no-BS promise to unionized building trades

Published on: October 30, 2017 | Last Updated: October 30, 2017 6:30 PM PDT


VICTORIA — The mood was of course upbeat Friday, when Premier John Horgan marked his 101st day in office by addressing a B.C. Federation of Labour conference on the future of work.

But amid a self-congratulatory list of NDP accomplishments to date, the premier also signalled a major shift in the awarding of billions of dollars worth of contracts for roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and other public infrastructure.

“Low bids might be good for B.C. Liberals,” declared Horgan to the trade union crowd in the ballroom at the Empress Hotel. “But best bids are what we are going to do.”

As to what constitutes a “best bid” in the estimation of the New Democrats, Horgan dropped some strong indications.

His rationale is that when public funds are being used to build a road, a bridge or other public work, “there should be something more” in terms of a public benefit than just the resulting structure.

Such as? “There should be hiring locally, you should be training apprentices, you should be hiring local suppliers and small businesses.”

The comment played well with the fed, which has been lobbying for a 25 per cent quota for apprentices on public construction jobs. Other worthy goals would include more openings for women, First Nations, and others who are under-represented in the construction sector.

Horgan’s Friday musings — he made a similar commitment at an urban renewal conference — prompted followup questions in the legislature Monday during debate on the budget for the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.

Seeking details about what constituted a “best bid”, was Michael Lee, B.C. Liberal MLA and candidate for the party leadership. Perhaps caught off guard, cabinet minister Claire Trevena took many minutes to consult with staff before coming up with any answers at all.

“The approach of a best bid on a project will be investing in the tangential future of the province, “ she began.

Whatever the heck that means.

This gave a better sense: “Investing in people and the local economies, to make sure that we’ve got the strength going forward to really make B.C. the best possible place it can be, both economically as well as physically.”

Yes, but what were the actual criteria for a best bid?

“We’re still going to be working, as a ministry, with the premier’s office to develop the criteria.” replied the minister.

Emphasis on the role of the premier’s office, I’m thinking.

For Horgan let out more than Trevena about where the government is headed on highways and other infrastructure work.

She was asked point blank if the preferred model for “best bid” was to be a repeat of the pro-union labour agreement the NDP imposed on the Vancouver Island Highway Project back in the 1990s. She ducked the question.

But here’s the relevant passage from Horgan’s address to the B.C. Fed conference on Friday afternoon.

“We’re going to build roads, schools, and hospitals across our province and we’ll use project labour agreements to do it,” vowed the premier.

“Success stories like the Vancouver Island Highway Project can happen again. It put thousands of local people to work, with good jobs that benefit families and communities.”

It also did all those things at a higher cost to taxpayers.

The NDP-imposed project labour agreement for the $1.2 billion highway project obliged contractors to hire union labour on a fixed wage schedule, adding tens of millions to the cost of construction.

As it happened, the political driver behind the Vancouver Island highway deal, former premier Glen Clark, was a visitor on the floor of the legislature Monday.

One notes, too, that Blair Redlin, who headed the crown agency in charge of the island highway project for Clark, was a member of the transition team for the current NDP government.

Plus all this is connected to a promise Horgan made in person to the building trades back in the spring of 2016. At the time, the NDP leader’s strong stands against Site C and the Pacific NorthWest LNG project had angered the unions and their formidable executive director, Tom Sigurdson.

But in a fence-mending speech to the building trades convention in the provincial capital in April of that year, Horgan vowed that if the NDP formed government, he would again guarantee the unions a big piece of the action on public construction projects.

“I am not *bleep* you today,” declared Horgan “You will be at the table with me, working with the proponents … building B.C. is not the exclusive purview of the B.C. Liberals.”

SNIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

The point being that the amounts here are enormous.

The NDP election platform promised an additional $1.4 billion in capital construction for each of the next five years, above and beyond the average $8 billion a year already budgeted by the B.C. Liberals.

So contracts for close to $50 billion worth of public construction could be captured by Horgan’s vow to put unions back in the driver’s seat in the months and years ahead.

http://vancouversun.com/opinion/columni ... ing-trades

[The Green Barbarian]

The NDP just plain sucks. Dr. Weaver, do the right thing and please end this abortion of a government right now.

[gman313]

so I guess the best quality and price is out the window. What a waste of time my business degree was

[Urban Cowboy]

so I guess the best quality and price is out the window. What a waste of time my business degree was

Yeah you can kiss quality goodbye. Union labor is all about seniority not skill.

[Snman]

I never met a union man (some are friends of mine, admittedly) who did not vote NDP. Whenever I asked them why they vote NDP the response was always "because the Union told me to". Sheep, all of them, imho. Horgan is doing exactly as expected, exactly. We are in a pickle for sure.

[Urban Cowboy]

I never met a union man (some are friends of mine, admittedly) who did not vote NDP. Whenever I asked them why they vote NDP the response was always "because the Union told me to". Sheep, all of them, imho. Horgan is doing exactly as expected, exactly. We are in a pickle for sure.

100% correct. He hasn't made one single move that surprised me.

The very same whiners who cried about the cost of bridges built by the Liberals, now won't make a sound when public projects cost billions more, because Horgan is beholden to unions, and quite possibly for lesser quality work.

The NDP are nothing more than self serving disgusting hypocrites, who happen to feel the public treasury is their own personal piggy bank, to do with as they please.

[maryjane48]

Best quality is union . Best bang for buck is union. Not the scab companies the bclibs rewarded for donations.

[madmudder]

The NDP are nothing more than self serving disgusting hypocrites, who happen to feel the public treasury is their own personal piggy bank, to do with as they please.

Yes the same corporate asshats that did the same are now whining. Priceless

[The Green Barbarian]

Best quality is union . Best bang for buck is union. s.

Spoken like someone who can't do math, and has never run a business or been in the real world. Just spouting NDP/Unions blather.

[The Green Barbarian]

Yes the same corporate asshats that did the same are now whining. Priceless

Unfortunately, we can put a price (probably billions) that it's going to cost BC taxpayers for the NDP's idiotic union only policy. The NDP never has a problem blowing billions on bad ideas and bad ideology. The NDP is a disease. Please Mr. Weaver, pull the plug and let this patient die. We can't afford this abortion that you and Horker have created.

[LordEd]

Not the scab companies

Who is on strike?