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 2010, when Vancouver hosted the world.
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 February 6, 2003, Vancouver needed a shove. The city was days from a vote on the 2010 Olympic bid. A “No” would kill it, like Bern’s bid. The IOC visit was set for early March, with the final decision just months away.
ICBA chose a simple message you could see from blocks away: light more than 20 tower cranes with “2010 Yes” signs. This wasn’t fluff. Games venues were pegged at $620 million. Canada Line and Sea-to-Sky upgrades added $2.5 billion. Hotels and restaurants would expand. About 25,000 construction jobs were on the line.
Members moved fast. “The industry responded so well, so quickly,” Philip Hochstein says. Clearbrook Iron built the signs. Ron Karras of Micron Formwork persuaded a skeptical WorkSafeBC that the plan was safe. Contractors got their clients onside. Launch day, ICBA chair Joe Lindgren stood in front of live TV and hit a ceremonial switch. The switch wasn’t actually connected. “We had someone on a mic somewhere out of sight saying, ‘light them, light them!’” Hochstein recalls. It could have gone sideways. It didn’t.
The skyline lit up. The cranes became the banner for a broader push. One critic griped, “If they are so convinced they are right, why do they have to repeat it so much?” Voters answered: 64% said Yes. The IOC saw a city that could deliver. In July, Vancouver won in the second round and became Canada’s third Olympic host.
The Games pushed a bigger, tougher Vancouver back into the global spotlight for the first time since Expo 86. The 17 days were packed and well run. As one retrospective put it: “Never have our city streets seen so much activity, nor has there been an Olympic city as lively as Vancouver. The atmosphere in the streets could be described as surreal and magical.” The legacy was concrete: new and upgraded sports sites, transportation links, and a new neighbourhood at Southeast False Creek, born as the athletes’ village.
ICBA didn’t just clap from the stands. Weeks after Vancouver won the bid, we pulled together senior leaders from member companies to advise on labour supply, budgets, scheduling, bidding, and things that raise costs. As Hochstein said then, “To get an Olympics right, you have to get the construction right,” with a focus on on-time, on-budget delivery.
Big projects attract pressure to give special deals to the Building Trades. ICBA stayed alert, because small wording changes can tilt the field and hike costs for taxpayers. In July 2004, media reported that VANOC head John Furlong was “receptive to the idea of a long-term labour agreement with unionized construction firms,” which the Building Trades were pushing. ICBA pushed back. In May 2005, Hochstein called out the B.C. Federation of Labour for trying to trade threats for perks: “If the BC Federation of Labour is sincere about not disrupting construction job sites leading up to the Olympics, President Jim Sinclair should make that commitment today. He doesn’t need a project labour agreement to do that. But instead, he’s trying to wring concessions out of VANOC by raising the spectre of future labour unrest.”
People closest to government say that scheme was never going to fly. Ken Dobell, former deputy to Premier Gordon Campbell and a VANOC member, says: “First of all, you’re cutting a bunch of people out of the system, which you shouldn’t do. Secondly, it’s questionable whether that’s even going to work any better. No, it certainly didn’t carry the day, to the extent that I don’t even remember that event [union pressure for a deal] as one of the big things.” Dan Doyle, VANOC’s executive vice-president for construction, is blunt: “Gordon Campbell would never have stood for it and none of his cabinet would have.”
The pressure wasn’t limited to the Games. Hochstein recalls a mid-2000s chat with the head of the Vancouver Airport Authority about a union deal to “assure” labour peace – the buy-fire-insurance-from-the-arsonist routine.
“We’re always fighting that,” Hochstein says. “That’s always an educational challenge for us with clients, particularly with clients who come from other places where unions are more prevalent or they have more control over projects.”
For the Olympics, the client held the line on equal opportunity and open bidding – and the city got the result it needed.
After the Olympics, the Campbell era quickly came to an end. On November 18, 2010, ICBA stood with the other major construction associations and Campbell at the Vancouver Convention Centre. ICBA and partners presented Campbell the first, and only, “Builder of the Decade” recognition for leading the biggest construction push in B.C. history. Nearly 900 people were there, including the full B.C. Liberal cabinet and caucus. The message was simple: the industry had been shrinking before Campbell; under him, it grew. Port Mann Bridge, Canada Line, Kicking Horse Canyon, Vancouver Convention Centre – billions in public infrastructure, and the stage set for billions more in private builds.
The tone was celebratory but also unsettled. Earlier that month, Campbell had announced he would step down, concluding the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) fight had turned the public debate into a referendum on him and pulled focus from the work of government.
The HST landed in July 2009, weeks after an election where the party said it wasn’t on the table. A harmonized value-added tax promised real economic gains and had support from ICBA and other business groups. Many British Columbians saw it as rushed and as a shift from businesses to households. Bill Vander Zalm rode the anger, drove a petition, and forced a referendum that killed the HST. Campbell’s approval fell into single digits, and talk of a caucus revolt swirled.
In a sober statement the day Campbell resigned, Philip Hochstein said the premier was again putting the public ahead of himself: “Gordon Campbell’s place in the history books is assured. When people look back at the accomplishments made by him and his government, he will be seen as one of the most accomplished political leaders in the history of our province and our country.” Campbell’s run was historic: a 2001 landslide, then wins in 2005 and 2009 – only the fourth B.C. premier ever to take three straight majorities.
From 2001-2011, ICBA backed Campbell’s growth agenda with hard-hitting campaigns. In 2005, rollercoaster-themed ads urged voters not to let the NDP take the economy for another wild ride. In 2009, a sheepish NDP lawn sign carried the “wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time” message. In 2005, ICBA and other construction groups also organized a “B.C. Construction Industry Convoy” that circled the Legislature during the Throne Speech – an unusual and high-impact show of support.
Hochstein was direct about the stakes: “Family-owned construction businesses experienced the NDP-made economic devastation during the 1990s. We cannot afford to repeat history and must support forward-thinking governments who are focused on long-term opportunities for our children, and not just short-term opportunities for their friends.”
The NDP mounted strong comebacks in both 2000s campaigns. Voters stuck with the B.C. Liberals, and the industry surged. Joe Lindgren, ICBA chair in 2002/03, captured the mood: “We were moving down the road. The economy was strong, there were jobs, we could get people to hire, you know, we believed that tomorrow was going to be better than today.”
