Vaughn Palmer: NDP displaying preference for unions over Indigenous relations

Opinion: Companies owned by the Cowichan Tribes have so far been frozen out from the $1.45-billion Cowichan District Hospital replacement project.

VICTORIA — The B.C. NDP’s insistence that workers on the Cowichan District Hospital replacement project take out union memberships has led to an embarrassing standoff with the local Indigenous community.

The $1.45-billion project is the first health facility to be built under one of the NDP’s union-favouring community benefit agreements (CBA).

Companies owned by the Cowichan Tribes have so far been frozen out from project contracts because their workers are not members of one of the unions on the NDP’s preferred list.

The government maintains it is trying to negotiate a compromise with the Cowichan Tribes.

But the lack of progress to date has raised complaints about the party’s apparent lack of respect for Indigenous rights and the principles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

There was an especially bitter blast last month from Jon Coleman, president and owner of Jon Co Contracting, one of the member companies in the Cowichan Tribes-owned Khowutzun Development company.

“What is most frustrating, is that this project is on the unceded territory of Cowichan Tribes, and my company, and other First Nation companies, are being told that we cannot work in our traditional territory!” wrote Coleman in a Jan. 16 media release.

“Instead, work is being granted to businesses outside of the territory and outside of the Cowichan Valley. There is a real possibility that the general contractor will be bringing in temporary foreign workers, because they cannot find local labour.”

Meanwhile, said Coleman, “I have been forced to lay off staff and return equipment hired and leased, specifically for the work we planned on doing at the hospital. Not only has this caused tremendous financial stress, but it has also created uncertainty for my employees who are residents of the Cowichan Valley.”

The contractor first brought the issue to light last December. He organized a picket line at the project site to protest his company being refused a permit because its workers were not members of one of the unions on the NDP cabinet-approved list.

“We shouldn’t have to be a union to work in our own territory,” Coleman said at the time.

Later that month, he lifted the picket line at the behest of the Cowichan Tribes leadership, allowing work to resume pending talks to resolve the impasse.

But this month he complained that the David Eby government had not lived up to its side of the agreement.

“It was communicated to me that Premier Eby was personally looking into the issue and that he was going to ensure that Cowichan Tribes members would have a permit to work on the hospital site without joining the union,” wrote Coleman.

“One month later and Cowichan Tribes still does not have a resolution from the premier’s office, and my company, an Indigenous company within Cowichan Tribes territory, is still not allowed to work on this project.”

Hence Coleman’s sense of betrayal.

“This is my territory and I am a proud Cowichan Tribes member,” he wrote. “I feel like I am being handled paternalistically by the government in the same way I was when I was at Indian day school as a child.

“The community benefits agreement is not the reconciliation we were promised,” he continued. “If this government’s promises about UNDRIP meant anything, they would have fixed this long ago.”

Normally, a complaint like that would have prompted instant denials and prompt redress from the New Democrats.

Instead, they appear to be taking their sweet time dealing with the complaints from the Cowichan Tribes.

“We are in an ongoing conversation with Cowichan Tribes to discuss their concerns,” said the health ministry this week, confirming the leisurely approach.

“We’re listening to them and continue to work to support economic opportunities for their members.”

Far from freezing out Indigenous people, the ministry insisted that “local Indigenous tradespeople are working on the project, including members of the Cowichan Tribes.”

“As work ramps up and as more crews are needed, more community members will be hired because, under the Community Benefits Agreement, qualified Indigenous peoples, women, and locals are among the first hired.”

Just so long as they live up to CBA requirements and join one of the unions on the NDP list, presumably.

Before imposing a CBA on the Cowichan hospital replacement — to that point they had only been applied to transportation projects — the New Democrats were warned by the government’s own Partnerships B.C. agency that the terms could add 20 per cent to the cost of the project.

They went ahead anyway. Then last fall they had to report the project had already gone 63 per cent over budget, from an initial $887 million to the latest $1.45 billion costing, and fallen a year behind schedule.

The government blamed inflation, supply chain problems, worker shortages and the decision to increase the floor space by 20 per cent after the business plan was approved.

No surprise that they didn’t acknowledge the CBA as a factor in the budget overrun.

But as Indigenous contractor Coleman suggested, the union preference is more sacrosanct to the NDP than fiscal responsibility or Indigenous relations.

vpalmer@postmedia.com