The following op-ed, written by ICBA VP-Communications Jordan Bateman, first appeared in the Journal of Commerce on Friday, September 12, 2025.
We’ve all heard of the dine-and-dash. Well in a new twist, the NDP government is perfecting the legislate-but-no-cash: bringing in new rules for employers while sprinting away from their own bill attached to them.
Fraser Health Authority, one of the largest public sector builders in B.C., has told contractors that they won’t be compensated for the costs of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation statutory holiday or the province’s five-days-paid-sick-leave regime. Both measures came into force after these projects were bid, budgeted, and contracts signed. This is a very real, very unfair burden on construction companies and tradespeople working on government health projects right now.
It’s troubling and hypocritical for the David Eby government to make sweeping changes to employment law but not require government agencies pay the costs for those changes. Instead, they leave the small and medium-sized businesses high and dry. Imagine what would happen if an employer said, “The statutory holiday was declared after you started working, so we aren’t going to pay you for it.” This is exactly what is happening to FHA contractors.
No contractor could possibly have priced those costs into their bids. When the rules of the game change after kickoff, it is only fair for the referee – in this case, the provincial government – to manage the game accordingly. But instead of fairness, contractors are being told by Fraser Health and Victoria to simply eat the costs.
For small and mid-sized companies already running on razor-thin margins and facing a slowdown in many parts of the construction sector, this is devastating. One extra paid holiday might not sound like much to a politician in Victoria, but on a multi-year construction project with dozens of subcontractors and hundreds of workers, the costs add up fast: seven figures in some cases.
These are material, unbudgeted costs that drain contingency funds and put real stress on cash flow. And it was caused by the provincial government and Fraser Health – the entities buying the work – after contractors signed contracts in good faith.
Fraser Health will argue that its contract language only compensates contractors for legislative changes that apply specifically to health care projects, not for changes that apply to every project across every industry. This makes absolutely no sense and is an insult to construction contractors and their teams. It may be a clever loophole for the lawyers, but it is bad faith in practice. Courts across Canada have made it clear that public owners have a duty to act with honesty and fairness in contract performance. Offloading the government’s policy costs onto trade contractors violates that duty and shifts the burden onto the very businesses building our hospitals and health care facilities.
The ripple effects are serious. Contractors will be forced to jack up future bids to protect themselves from surprise legislative changes – no one will take the view that they will be able to negotiate more dollars to cover unanticipated costs imposed by government. The implications are fewer bidders, higher prices, and worse value for taxpayers.
Government can’t have it both ways. If the Premier wants new statutory holidays or expanded paid leave, then he must also be willing to pay for those changes on government jobs. The private sector cannot opt out, why can government? Instead, the Eby government is demanding private contractors – many of them family-run businesses – silently eat the cost to subsidize the government’s policy agenda.
It’s a troubling pattern. Over the past eight years, the NDP has repeatedly moved the goalposts on construction. Community Benefits Agreements force workers to join a union just to build a hospital or highway, stripping away freedom of choice and freezing out 85% of construction workers who are not members of any union. New regulations, new fees, and now new statutory obligations – without fair compensation – pile costs onto contractors and drive up housing and infrastructure prices across B.C.
The solution is straightforward. Public owners should recognize post-award legislative changes that increase direct labour costs as compensable. They should create a simple, transparent mechanism for flowing those adjustments through prime contracts to subcontractors. This is standard practice in other jurisdictions, and it reflects the spirit of good faith that should guide all public procurement.
Builders aren’t asking for handouts. They are asking for fairness. When the government changes the law, the government should cover the costs on its own projects.
