YOUR PERSPECTIVE: NDP’s CBAs are a barrier to economic reconciliation

I’ve been paying close attention to a situation developing on Vancouver Island where local Indigenous contractors are being barred from working on the Cowichan Hospital replacement project on their lands. Why? Because under David Eby’s discriminatory Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) charade, previously contracted workers are now being shut out of work unless they’re a member of an NDP-friendly union.

As Shadow Minister for Labour, I’m especially concerned about the disaster that CBAs have become since, unlike what the name suggests, they clearly have no benefit to the local community. In fact, the Cowichan Tribes, whose ancestral territory this project is being built on, recently stated that the government didn’t bother consulting or negotiating with them when establishing this policy which is now getting in the way of economic reconciliation. The government has repeatedly ignored calls from the Official Opposition, the Cowichan Tribes and affected Indigenous business leaders asking to scrap the discriminatory CBA and allow Cowichan Tribes member companies to work on their lands.

The NDP’s botched CBA policy has increased hospital construction costs from $600 million to more than $1.4 billion, severely delayed the project, and is now shutting out local and Indigenous workers from the community. It gets worse when reports show that CBAs block 85 per cent of B.C.’s workforce from being able to work on public infrastructure projects. It’s a shame that NDP red tape continues to get in the way of critical infrastructure projects such as this hospital when so many are still waiting for healthcare services.

My colleague Michael Lee and I recently wrote a letter to the Premier, strongly urging him to reconsider CBAs and their true impact on communities such as the Cowichan Tribes, and to discontinue discriminatory CBAs that neither increase First Nations’ employment participation or equity within their own communities, nor achieve any measurable benefit to B.C. taxpayers.