August 19, 2026
EVERY DAY, CARY KANE drives 180 kilometres: 90 km to work and another 90 back home in the Fraser Valley. The long daily trip takes hours out of Kane’s day altogether — but he isn’t exactly complaining.
“That’s a bit of a commitment,” he says of the commute, but “I think for the wage, it’s worth it, and for my union pension and benefits and everything.”
Kane, a CMAW Local 1995 carpenter, is one of about 750 workers on the Broadway Subway project, an extension of the Millennium Line that’s expected to run about 6 km between the existing VCC-Clark station and Arbutus Street.
And they all benefit from the same community benefit agreement (CBA) that governs the construction project. The Broadway Subway project is one of a number of public projects with a CBA, or a project labour agreement (PLA), since the B.C. government announced in 2018 that designated provincial projects would be governed by PLAs.
The projects include the Patullo Bridge, the Broadway Subway, the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain line, the Massey Tunnel, highway projects, hospitals, schools and more.
About 6,500 people have worked under CBAs and several thousand more have worked under PLAs, according to BC Building Trades executive director Brynn Bourke.
And in the spring, BCBT celebrated a victory affirming PLAs: a recent attempt by the BC Conservatives to ban the government from enforcing PLAs was turned down by B.C.’s legislature.
MLA Kiel Giddens introduced Bill M233 on Mar. 5, a day after the BCBT’s annual convention ended.
“During that convention, we met with members of the opposition party to talk about priorities in the construction industry and how to work collaboratively together,” Bourke says.
“In that meeting, at no time did MLA Kiel Giddens indicate that he intended to introduce the private member’s bill that would ban PLAs and CBAs. He did it two days later.”
The bill was lauded by chambers of commerce and boards of trade, business and industry lobby groups, and the company union CLAC, claiming it would open up competition and result in lower project costs.
But Bourke says the bill constituted “a clear and present attack on trade unions.”
“These are people who are your friends and neighbours, people who live in your community, people who are raising families, putting food on the table, paying mortgages off paycheques that they’re earning on these public projects,” Bourke says.
“People whose livelihoods are threatened when you say you’re going to abandon these types of labour agreements that prioritize local hire and apprenticeship.”
Shane Roberts knows that too well.
As a single father to a seven-year-old daughter, Roberts says he’s only able to keep working because his work on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain line pays well enough to afford childcare.
“If I was making 24 bucks an hour doing high-rise, I couldn’t do it,” he says. “I’d have to stop working and go on the government nipple, so to speak. And that’s not good. I’d just as soon be paying taxes and being a productive member of society.”
The LiUNA Local 1611 had been working on the Surrey-Langley line for about a month when his home burned down.
“I’m grateful to our neighbour who’s putting us up right now, so I can keep working and my daughter can continue going to school,” says Roberts.
“My neighbour’s a blessing.”
He calls Bill M233 a “slap in the face” to workers amid an affordability crisis. That crisis is clear and present to Roberts as he looks for new housing.
“They’re just not on the same page, I feel, as a lot of Canadian workers and what we’re going through,” he says.
“You de-unionize — I don’t understand. Why would you do that? It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s like kicking the Canadians in the balls to hire foreign labour.”
A similar project nearly two decades ago, the Canada Line, under the BC Liberals’ government, went in a very different direction, with increased privatization through a public-private partnership. And it relied on temporary foreign workers from Costa Rica who made US$1,000 a month for 60-hour weeks.
Project labour agreements and community benefit agreements, on the other hand, often mandate contractors hire locally.
And Roberts points out that the investment pays off.
“The money that we’re making on these infrastructure jobs, we’re putting that money back into the economy,” he says. “Whether it’s paying rent or buying a house, paying taxes — it all comes back.”
Labouring below Broadway, Kane says workers face their share of challenges. That includes potential exposure to silica — but Kane says having a unionized worksite means the contractors are being held accountable to ensure that is limited.
“The quality would go downhill,” he says. “Obviously it would hurt us — all unions — and it would hurt the product in the end.”
So, when Giddens introduced Bill M233, BCBT struck back with a campaign in support of CBAs and PLAs.
Bourke says the bill was orchestrated by the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association, the Progressive Contractors Association and CLAC.
“I don’t even have to speculate about that because they were standing behind Kiel Giddens on April 13, when the bill was debated,” Bourke says, also pointing to a joint press conference the PCA held with Giddens.
“So, this was clearly a trial balloon and putting the building trades and the general public on notice that the Conservatives would ban these agreements. And so that is why we reacted so quickly and so strongly.”
She notes the opposition party has a limited number of private members’ bills that they are allowed to submit each year, and this bill reveals the BC Conservatives’ priorities.
Bourke says the campaign had plenty of support, garnering more than 2,600 signatures on a petition in just a handful of weeks. The campaign also involved a full-page ad featuring over 1,000 trades workers’ signatures in the Times Colonist newspaper in Victoria.
BCBT also took out ads in major radio markets, digital ads and SkyTrain station ads to make their message heard.
The bill was ultimately defeated, with 42 votes in favour compared to 48 against.
In the debate, BCNDP MLAs noted the benefits of PLAs and CBAs — they pointed to recruiting and retaining workers in B.C. and to the poor working conditions for temporary foreign workers on the Canada Line.
And they pointed out the common union-busting comments from the BC Conservatives.
“[A public] project should not just build a facility; it should help build the community around it,” said Cowichan Valley MLA Qwulti’stunaat Debra Toporowski.
“Public construction is not just about concrete and steel; it is about public trust.”
By Dustin Godfrey