August 26, 2025
VIRGINIA DAVIDSON HAD SPENT five years working across the country, away from her home when the pandemic hit.
She was working in Ontario as a welder, but ultimately moved to pipefitting, figuring the welding was good practice for getting into her new trade.
“It’s such a diverse trade,” Davidson said of why she wanted to get into pipefitting. “I just thought it was a trade that opened up a lot of different opportunities and could take you in a lot of different directions, depending on what your preferences are.”
One of those opportunities came in 2020 when she was able to work closer to her Prince George home, on the LNG Canada project in Kitimat.
“LNG starting just happened to be good timing,” she said.
“I have a mom who has a bit of a heart condition, so when COVID first hit, that was obviously a pretty big concern for me. Just getting to have a little bit more time with friends and come back home and be close to family, that was the main thing.”
Tensions with Trump
As US President Donald Trump pushes a trade war with Canada and intermittently muses about annexation, Canadian leaders are considering ways to bolster economic sovereignty and security.
And that was a key issue in this year’s federal election, with both the Liberals and Conservatives campaigning on expanding resource extraction and streamlining project approvals.
At the same time, the provincial government here in B.C. has announced that 18 natural resource projects have been earmarked for fast-tracking.
“If you had told me a few years ago that one man’s economic agenda could rattle global markets and threaten the livelihoods of working Canadians, I would have had my doubts. But here we are,” said Bryan Railton, business manager of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 115 (IUOE 115).
“With Donald Trump’s reckless economic policies disrupting trade and sowing uncertainty, it’s clear — we need to take charge of our future.”
This comes as LNG Canada received its first test shipment of liquified natural gas from the landing of the Maran Gas Roxana in Kitimat in April. The shipment marks a milestone for a project that has been powered by union labour, from the pipeline to the Kitimat plant to the 4,500-person camp that houses the workers.
And as new resource projects move ahead, workers and union officials say the labour movement needs to be involved to ensure the economic benefits extend to workers who make the projects happen.
The LNG Opportunity
Today, Davidson, a member of the UA Local 170, works on maintenance at the LNG plant in Kitimat, where she works five days a week.
“I really only have weekends off, but because it’s a pretty close drive from Prince George, I’m able to head down on long weekends and see my friends and family,” she said.
“Normally we don’t get to work just five days a week, so this is also a very nice shift for me.”
But before she took on her current job, she was part of the crew building the plant, which was a 14-days-on-seven-days-off schedule, giving her longer stretches at home with friends and family.
“It was nice because they flew us in and flew us out for the majority of the project, so that saves a lot of travel time,” Davidson said.
But at the same time, she’d been living in a large camp near Kitimat, which she said also had a wide array of amenities aimed at improving life away from home.
However, “camp” may be a misleading term. It’s almost as much a town, with solid structures housing around 4,500 workers — well over half the population of Kitimat.
And it comes with an array of recreational and leisure amenities.
Mike Lightheart, a first cook who represents kitchen workers as a job steward with Unite Here Local 40, said those amenities include a theatre, arcades, pool tables, video gaming rooms, rock climbing, basketball courts and sports fields.
Lightheart, who has a Red Seal, has been working in the kitchen at that camp since around the time it opened.
“I was cooking in the city, and I got laid off, obviously, during COVID,” he said.
As he was looking for work, he found a listing for camp work in Kitimat and he’s been working there ever since.
At first, he was a second cook, part of a crew making food for an occupancy of 2,300 at the camp, before it ramped up to the current level of 4,500 people.
“It’s a huge operation. I’ve never worked in a kitchen like this before,” he said. “We’ve got a buffet service and we have all sorts of different stations.”
The service industry is not one with high rates of unionization. Whereas around 30 per cent of workers in general are covered by unions across the country, that same rate was only 5.8 per cent for accommodation and food services last year, according to Statistics Canada.
But at the Central Valley Lodge camp, workers like Lightheart benefit from representation from Unite Here 40.
And since signing with the union, the workers have bargained for a $5-an-hour wage increase, job security assurances and other benefits, not just for the kitchen workers, but for janitors, front desk workers and more.
“For hospitality in general, I can’t go back to the city and be making the kind of money I’m making out here now. I can go back to the city, I can be a sous chef for an executive chef, but I can’t make nearly as much,” Lightheart said.
“It’s critically important to us that we know we’re here and we’re making money because we’ve got families and bills and mortgages and stuff.”
That includes himself.
“My wife and I, we have a daughter now. She’s three, so I’ve got responsibilities,” he said. “I need this time now to make money, put money away.”
Davidson, too, said she has benefitted from union involvement in the project.
“I’m a fairly small female. I know a lot of people probably wouldn’t have given me the employment opportunities that I have gotten and the ability to prove myself as far as giving people a fair chance. I strongly advocate for unions in that way,” she said.
“If we get more economic growth and the unions get stronger, it will help our workforce because they have a tendency to train and bring in a lot of people that might not get the chance otherwise.”
And the LNG Canada project has brought her career to new levels. She became a general foreman before turning 30, a position she said a worker usually doesn’t usually achieve until their mid-30s to later-40s.
“It was a good opportunity career-wise to just get my head in a higher level of management and understanding the background work it takes to actually co-ordinate work and move a project along like that,” she said.
Developing natural resources in partnership with First Nations
IUOE 115 business manager Railton noted that B.C. is rich in resources, including “incredible potential” in the mining sector, and that union labour has been key to developing those resources in the past.
“And we’re ready to do it again — with skill, with pride, and with purpose,” he said.
“What’s more, by working in full partnership with Indigenous communities, these projects can drive long-term economic development in rural B.C. and help reassert Canada’s economic sovereignty.”
Geoff Higginson, president of the Bargaining Council of the BC Building Trades Unions, said First Nations whose territories are the source of natural resource projects have to be involved throughout the process.
And the unions, Higginson said, have been supportive of that partnership.
“What we can do is support First Nations in being part of our unions,” he said.
That has been realized in particular through developing training programs for Indigenous students.
“The Bargaining Council and the unions have always worked with First Nations to develop training programs that work for them. And it’s not just Indigenous folks. It’s women in the trades and newcomers to Canada and foreign workers who come here,” Higginson said.
“But the key is the relationships that we have, with governments, with unions, with our members and with First Nations. We already have the capacity to do this. We have training systems.”
Another key piece the broader labour movement brings to major projects is Project Labour Agreements.
Once agreed to, PLAs have effectively eliminated strikes and lockouts, while ensuring more bargaining power for workers, who have the power of multiple unions and their larger collective memberships working together.
At the same time, it’s easier for contractors bidding on projects because they know that whoever is bidding on the same project is working with the same wages, benefits and working conditions.
In short, bidding on a project isn’t a race to the bottom, but rather a race to the top.
“So the people who actually get to work are the people who are capable of managing a project of that size. When you don’t have any stability on the cost of labour, it goes both ways: you can end up with unskilled labour, or untrained labour, on the site, because people are trying to make more money by cutting corners,” Higginson said.
Similarly, when labour shortages lead to a necessary increase in wages, the PLA was set to include a 12 per cent wage increase, Higginson said — “but everybody had to pay it.”
With both Premier David Eby and Prime Minister Mark Carney focused on the development of Canada’s natural resources, BC Building Trades members are in position to take their careers to the next level, while supporting Canada in the process.
By Dustin Godfrey