ICBA celebrates 50 years of serving open shop construction this year, and we are looking back every week at some of the significant moments, milestones, and people who helped ICBA become Canada’s largest construction association.
Today, we turn back the clock to 1992 and ICBA joining forces with other business groups for the first time.
The interviews and other original research on which the ICBA50 series is based were conducted by writer Kevin Hanson. We appreciate Kevin’s work capturing the people, events, and milestones that shaped ICBA’s first half-century.
On December 15, 1992, the ballroom at the Hotel Vancouver was packed—more than 350 people, all entrepreneurs and small business owners, united by one thing: they’d had enough.
It felt a lot like another big moment at the same hotel a few years earlier, when B.C.’s open shop contractors showed off what they were capable of by stepping up to build Expo 86. But this time it wasn’t just construction. This was broader: members of more than a dozen business associations had come together to form the Coalition of B.C. Businesses. It was a pivotal moment in both the evolution of the open shop movement and in shaping labour policy in B.C.
ICBA wasn’t just in the room – we were at the centre of it. A major funder and a driving force behind the Coalition’s creation, this was a big step. It marked our first formal push to build alliances beyond the construction sector. “It really helped the stature of ICBA,” recalls Philip Hochstein. “We became part of the mainstream business community.” It also gave small and medium-sized businesses across the province something they hadn’t had before: a strong, unified voice. These were the people behind 90% of B.C.’s new jobs – and they were finally getting organized.
Geoffrey Howes, from the B.C. Restaurant and Food Services Association, was part of that push. “We were scared to death of the [Labour Code] changes that [Minister] Moe Sihota had talked about,” he said. Small businesses, he added, had never really grasped how much influence they could wield together. “We always felt, you know, ‘we’re just a small business,’” Howes said. “But when you look at the stats of who creates the jobs, it isn’t the B.C. Federation of Labour.”
Marcia Smith, who handled communications for the Coalition, saw it the same way. “I like to think of the Coalition as kind of that little engine that could,” she said. “They were this small group of people and they worked hard to get their members’ voices heard in a way that maybe hadn’t happened before for the small business sector.”
That day at the Hotel Vancouver, Coalition members got a deep dive into Bill 84 – an NDP Labour Code overhaul that had business leaders deeply concerned. As Hochstein put it at the time: “How Harcourt and his cabinet choose to define ‘fair and balanced’ [when changing the Code] will set the tone for provincial labour relations.”
Premier Harcourt didn’t exactly inspire confidence out of the gate. In a 1991 speech to the B.C. Federation of Labour, he wrongly claimed the business community had agreed to fast-track the Labour Code changes – a statement he had to walk back almost immediately. But the process moved ahead anyway, led by a panel of government-appointed advisors.
ICBA weighed in with a detailed submission in the spring of 1992. Among the most important points? Keep secret ballot certification votes intact. The stage was set for more conflict to come.
