SURREY – British Columbia needs the common sense BC Conservatives in government and John Rustad in the Premier’s office, says the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association (ICBA), Canada’s largest construction association.
“As I visit communities across the province to meet contractors, small businesses and their workers, the voices desperately calling for change are everywhere. In a spring poll done for ICBA, 76% of British Columbians agreed that they feel ‘so many things are broken in BC right now.’ It’s a shocking number,” said Chris Gardner, ICBA President and CEO. “We need change in so many areas, it’s hard to know where to start – but only John Rustad and the BC Conservatives have the fresh thinking and new ideas to make it happen.”
Yesterday, the ICBA Board of Directors voted to endorse Rustad and the BC Conservatives, citing their concerns over the NDP’s ongoing mismanagement of B.C. by every significant metric used to measure economic performance and quality of life.
“If eye-watering expansion of government was the answer, B.C. would be a world leader in everything,” said Gardner, citing the NDP’s projected $9 billion budget deficit and a Business Council of British Columbia analysis that since 2022, private sector jobs have increased by just 5,300 while government jobs have grown by 63,800 – an astounding 12 to 1 ratio that’s simply not sustainable. “Our standard of living is now in sharp decline, and B.C. finds itself at the bottom of the pack in North America. What the NDP is doing is not working.”
Health care is collapsing, with emergency room closures now a regular occurrence and patients being sent to the United States for cancer treatment. Downtowns in every city are now defined by homelessness, open drug use, and random acts of violence. Homes and infrastructure are not getting built with anything near the speed that current needs demand. 85% of construction workers are cut out of infrastructure projects built under the NDP’s broken CBA model and workers have been stripped of the democratic right to a secret ballot vote in union drives.
“There is now a simple and clear choice between the common sense change offered by John Rustad and the BC Conservatives versus four more years of the dysfunction and decline that we’ve seen from David Eby and the NDP,” said Gardner. “We have enormous potential and could be doing so much better in B.C. The BC Conservatives are providing an opportunity for us to press the reset button on the challenges that the NDP have either ignored, made worse, or proven incapable of solving.”
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The Independent Contractors and Businesses Association (ICBA), the largest construction association in Canada, represents more than 4,000 members and clients. ICBA is one of the leading independent providers of group health and retirement benefits in Canada, supporting nearly 170,000 Canadians, and the single largest sponsor of trades apprentices in B.C. ICBA is Merit Canada’s affiliate in B.C. www.icba.ca
