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April 2020 – Women of the Year

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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BCBUSINESS.CA APRIL 2020 BCBUSINESS 17 ( the informer ) CHRIS ATCHISON The president of the BC Construction Association promotes home ownership for skilled tradespeople— and pushes back against the provincial government's project labour agreement by Nick Rockel F I V E Q U E ST ION S 5. WHAT IS THE IMPACT MIC, THE BCCA'S NEW MORTGAGE INVESTMENT CORPORATION? The Impact MIC is a first-time homebuyer mortgage financing initiative that will help essential workers, including skilled tradespeople, own a home in the community where they wish to live. Because the Impact MIC isn't subject to the federal mortgage stress test like banks and credit unions, it will make securing a mortgage easier. At the same time, it provides a growing impact investment market with a tax-free vehicle that supports housing affordability in B.C. • 1 April is Construction Month. How would you de- scribe the health of the B.C. industry? We're seeing steady growth projections for the next few years. The B.C. construction industry is strong; it's got over $150 billion in current projects and another $206 billion in proposed projects. So things look really good for the industry at present and going forward. High-profile projects like the $40-billion LNG Canada plant in Kitimat are a large draw for skilled tradespeople, and that's creating demand in other areas of the province as well. The number of construc- tion companies in B.C. has grown in the past year, from 24,300 to more than 25,700. So we're seeing this emer- gence of skilled tradespeople who are taking the reins of their own companies and driving this economic growth through their own ingenuity and skill set. 2 What are three things the industry must do to help ensure its long-term success? About 44,000 workers are set to retire over the next 10 years or less, so attracting new workers to our sector is a priority. We'll need to provide more training opportunities and make our emerging workforce aware of what we call high-opportunity occupations: they pay well, they provide great benefits, they provide great labour mobility. We need to improve reten- tion rates, especially among tradespeople and those who are currently underrepre- sented in our workforce. That means addressing issues such as housing affordability and worksite culture, which we are doing through programs like the Builders Code and our impact mortgage investment corporation. The third element is technol- ogy. Our industry is changing, and with the skilled labour shortage and pressure to reduce costs and increase competi- tiveness, it's more important than ever to be innovative and future-forward. To do that, we need greater cooperation between B.C.'s tech sector and the construction sector, and we need to make construction employers aware of all the technologies and tools that are available to them. 3 How vulnerable is the construction sector to an eco- nomic downturn, whether it's a B.C. slowdown or a global recession? It would be naive to say that we're not vulnerable. I think we want to make sure that British Columbia is doing everything it can to compel investor confidence. The provincial government has a role to play in instilling good policies that encourage large infrastructure investments, and we need to be in a position to call out when policies are counterproductive to investment. We want B.C. to have eco- nomic development, we want it to have high environmental standards, high regulatory requirements—but other than that, good, open and transpar- ent policies that will allow inves- tor confidence to remain high so these projects can continue. 4 Your organization is part of a group that is legally chal- lenging the provincial govern- ment's community benefits agreement ( CBA) framework, on the grounds that it forces workers to join certain unions. Why is that a problem, and what would you like to see happen? Our issue is with the project labour agreement within the community benefits agreement, and we see that as violating workers' rights to association. It essentially disqualifies 85 percent of B.C.'s construction workforce from participating in these designated public projects that are paid for with provincial citizens' tax dollars. We've already seen that the CBA has resulted in fewer companies bidding on public projects, due to some of the unknowns and the risks, and the projects subject to the CBA are costing millions more just to meet the terms of the project labour agreement. Our hope is that our petition will be heard by the B.C. Su- preme Court. We hope the court will rule that the project labour agreement within the CBA is unfair and a discriminatory gov- ernment policy that violates the Charter rights of individuals. We share the goal of increased participation of underrepresented groups, such as women and Indigenous work- ers. It can be achieved without a government-enforced policy of the community benefits agreement. HOBBY For 15 to 20 years, my passion outside of work has been coaching high-performance boys' and girls' hockey FAVOURITE PLACE IN B.C. Lakelse Lake, just outside of Terrace. We have a family cabin up there FAVOURITE PODCASTS History That Doesn't Suck and American Elections: Wicked Game MOST MEMORABLE CONCERT Elton John at Vancouver's Pacific Coliseum, 1995 I CAN'T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT A pocket square GUILTY PLEASURE Oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies

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