Author: Jordan Bateman

Last week, ICBA made a submission to the Fair Wage Commission. The Commission was established by the B.C. NDP Government to move the minimum wage from its current rate of $11.35 to $15.00 per hour in 2019. ICBA recommended that:

1. The Commission be mindful of the inevitable unintended consequences of any precipitous increases to the minimum wage;
2. The John Horgan government adopt an orderly, predictable, incremental, and certain process which will take B.C.’s minimum wage to $15 per hour in 2022; and,
3. Increases thereafter be indexed annually to the prevailing B.C. CPI rate.

 To read our full submission, click HERE.

Chris and Jordan welcome Lori Ackerman, mayor of Fort St. John – and one of Canada’s most formidable supporters of responsible resource development. Lori is in Vancouver to pick up an award for FSJ, and we talked LNG, Kinder Morgan, fracking, oil and gas innovation, Site C, BC Liberal leadership, the rural-urban divide and more.

Last week, Tom Sigurdson of the Building Trades Unions ripped B.C.’s construction record in an op-ed in The Province. He was bent out of shape because ICBA had pointed out how successful the evolution of the industry has been since the NDP were last in power in the 1990s. Today, The Province published this short letter to the editor from ICBA President Chris Gardner:

No shame in construction industry

It is amazing that Tom Sigurdson and the B.C. Building Trades have such a negative view of the B.C. construction sector. Nearly 250,000 men and women go to job sites every day building B.C. They are highly skilled and hard-working.

Sigurdson’s view that for the past 20 years, B.C. “has one of the most shameful records on construction” is simply not true. B.C.’s construction sector built Olympic venues, the Canada Line, the Sea-to-Sky Highway, the Port Mann Bridge, the William R. Bennett bridge and many other major projects.

Sigurdson wants to return to a bygone era that denied opportunities for workers and where conflict was the order of the day. B.C.’s construction sector is safer than it has ever been and is training a new generation of workers. No one working in construction in B.C. has anything to be ashamed of.

Chris Gardner, president, Independent Contractors and Businesses Association

Did you know that ICBA offers training on your job site? Our training department would be pleased to set it up for you!

Interested in one of our courses for your staff but you’re not able to send them all to one of our public courses? Contact us at training@icba.ca with the course that you’re looking for and some potential dates, and the team will handle all of the logistics for you.

Our full list of courses can be found at www.icba.ca/training; check it out today! We can bring the trainer to you, anywhere in BC. We can also facilitate mobile equipment operator training, online courses, and customized training for your employees.

Our training team is already booking courses into 2018; make sure you don’t miss out by subscribing to our training newsletter at www.icba.ca/trainingnewsletter. And don’t forget, most of our courses qualify for Gold Seal and BC Housing CPD Points!

ICBA’s Jordan Bateman joined the Goddard Report this week and talked some Peyton Manning, Site C, Kinder Morgan and the end of Gregor Robertson’s foolish natural gas ban.

ICBA has sent a letter to the federal government’s Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities opposing Bill C-48, a moratorium on oil tankers near B.C.’s north coast.

“The federal government’s proposed tanker moratorium on British Columbia’s north coast will significantly constrain the export of British Columbia and Alberta-produced energy products,” the ICBA submission says. “Our review of the proposal offers no discernable public policy rationale for the tanker moratorium.”

In addition:

• The federal government has committed on many occasions to get Canada’s natural resources to tidewater. The oil tanker moratorium contradicts this commitment.
• The federal government has a comprehensive $1.5 billion Oceans Protection Plan. If this plan is going to be effective, then why is the moratorium on tankers on B.C.’s north coast necessary?
• About 1,400 tankers of Alaskan produced oil destined for refineries in Washington state is shipped through B.C. coastal waters every year. What, then, does the tanker moratorium effectively accomplish other than to preclude B.C.’s strategically located ports at Kitimat and Prince Rupert, from working with B.C. and Alberta energy producers and building new markets and supply chain routes for energy exports?
• The federal government has failed to provide industry with any evidence of environmental or safety gaps – rooted in scientific fact – that the moratorium is aimed at mitigating.
• Oil has been shipped in tankers off the British Columbia coast since the 1930’s and there has not been a major oil spill involving one of those tankers.
• There is no corresponding tanker moratorium proposed for any other coastal area of Canada, including the artic and east coasts. This unnecessarily pits “east” against “west” and is an inherently unfair application of federal law.
• Though the Northern Gateway pipeline is no longer proceeding, the federal government should not erect arbitrary barriers in the marketplace preventing other proponents from pursuing alternative proposals in northern B.C. which appropriately balance economic, environmental, community, and indigenous considerations. This is profoundly regrettable, given the economic benefits which could accrue throughout the energy value chain, including for our members who are small and medium-sized providers of construction services to many facets of the energy industry.

The full submission can be found HERE.

Last week, ICBA sent a letter to federal finance minister Bill Morneau, asking him to reverse a Canadian International Trade Tribunal decision that would make it prohibitively expensive to import huge, complex modules needed for LNG plants. No Canadian facility could manufacture these, but the tribunal failed to exempt them in a pushback against steel imported from China, South Korea and Spain.

As our letter states:

Effectively, the recent CITT determination has a significant adverse impact on the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry’s ability to source and import “large complex modules” required to build globally competitive LNG facilities in British Columbia. These components are extremely large, with some weighing in excess of 7,000 metric tonnes, and require specialized transportation vessels. Internationally, there are only a few fabrication yards capable of building these complex modules in line with the requirements and project timelines for LNG projects in British Columbia. These components must be moved by specialized marine heavy-lift ships given their enormous size, and cannot – and will not – be produced in Canada. There is simply no domestic supplier network in Canada that warrants protection.

The full letter can be found HERE.

So this is weird.

B.C. Premier John Horgan went to the annual BC Federation of Labour conference Oct. 26, and gave a speech laying out his labour agenda. More than 200 union activists were there, along with a handful of media.

We wanted to see the content of that speech, so we filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to get his speaking notes. This is a pretty standard FOI request.

We got the notes back today and, bizarrely, they’ve blanked-out four sections, saying that under Section 13 they can’t be released. Section 13 of the Act exempts “policy advice or recommendations.”

But this was a public speech! How can they hide these sections? How could they be policy advice or recommendations?

The first severed section comes just before a rant about how bad the BC Liberals were (pages 30-31 of 40). The second comes in the middle of that rant about how bad the BC Liberals were (page 33 of 41). The third one comes in the middle of the sentence, “and XXXXXXX temporary foreign workers” (page 34 of 41). The fourth one comes just before Horgan talks about education (page 34 of 41).

Rest assured, we’re appealing this to the independent FOI Commissioner.

Click HERE for the speaking notes.

From our point of view, Horgan’s rhetoric is divisive and concerning. It seems he’s willing to tilt the playing field fully in favour of the 20% of the construction industry that is in the Building Trades Unions. It’s favoritism. A sample of his comments:

• Horgan calls himself a “trade unionist” and pledges to “always be in [the BC Fed’s] corner.”
• “The Fair Wage Commission will look at the world of work, not just wages.”
• “We’ll use Project Labour Agreements… success stories like the Vancouver Island Highway project can happen again.”

BURNABY, B.C. – The Independent Contractors and Businesses Association (ICBA) applauded Desjardins, Canada’s largest credit union federation, for its announcement that it will continue to fund pipeline and other energy projects.

“This is welcome news for an industry that is under a lot of pressure and is often unfairly vilified,” said Chris Gardner, ICBA president. “We congratulate Desjardins on making the right call and supporting Canada’s responsible resource development industry, the billions of dollars it generates, and the more than 400,000 Canadians it directly employs.”

Earlier this year, Desjardins caved into pressure from environmental activists and announced it would stop funding pipeline projects.

ICBA was Canada’s first and loudest voice opposing Desjardins’ original decision. ICBA president Chris Gardner penned two nationally-published op-eds, and ICBA supporters used its #Get2Yes web platform to send nearly a thousand e-mails to Desjardins CEO Guy Cormier asking him to reconsider. ICBA also used social media, including Facebook videos and posts, to spread the word.

Most importantly, ICBA was putting its money where its mouth is and committed to moving its insurance clients away from Desjardins to companies which support responsible resource development and Canadian energy companies.

“This was always about more than just Desjardins – it’s a message to the world that Canada supports responsible development of our natural resources,” said Gardner. “If we expect the wealth, innovation and investment that flows from harnessing Canada’s resources to grow, we need people standing up for Canadian energy, Canadian jobs and made-in-Canada decisions that benefit us all.”