John Rustad: B.C. NDP stabs workers in the back with Chinese ferry contract

National Post

7 hours ago

Over the past century, British Columbia has been built by the calloused hands of hardworking loggers, truckers, shipbuilders, welders, electricians, rig workers, farmers and mechanics.
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And there have been no shortage of instances when B.C. Premier David Eby references these British Columbians, who are now struggling to make ends meet. Take, for example, his recent appearance at the 2025 CUPE BC Convention, where he waxed poetically about how 'we stand on our own two feet with an economy that serves working people,' while describing a Utopian 'strong B.C. … where no one gets left behind.'
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Yet while his rhetoric about looking after the interests of blue-collar workers throughout the province is continuous, the past few months clearly demonstrate how far the Eby government has strayed from those very workers.
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But don't take my word for it. The New Democratic Party provincial council — comprised of historically strong supporters like the B.C. Federation of Labour, the United Steelworkers and CUPE BC — just condemned the government with a stinging motion in support of B.C.-only procurement rules.
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The eruption of the NDP's current civil war was prompted by BC Ferries' recently announced decision to award a contract to a Chinese state-owned shipyard that's worth over $1 billion. The widespread criticism proved to be too much for the premier, who subsequently made calls to labour leaders condemning their decision to air their grievances publicly rather than behind closed doors.
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Yet muzzling dissenters isn't going to make David Eby's problems go away. His abandonment of British Columbian workers could prove to be a decisive moment in his tenure as premier and a turning point for a government defined by double speak and broken promises.
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Nowhere is this more apparent than with the NDP's backtracking on their 2020 election pledge to stop shipbuilding from 'being outsourced to other countries' by 'making strategic investments that will keep B.C. shipyards modern and competitive' and 'able to win more contracts and create more jobs.'
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Fast-forward to 2025, when both the premier and his minister of transportation, Mike Farnworth, are refusing to step in to cancel the purchase from China, hiding behind the flawed logic that BC Ferries is an independent company.
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In 2022, Eby's own NDP government applied pressure for leadership change after details of a major conflict of interest within BC Housing emerged. In 2017, they overruled the B.C. Utilities Commission to continue construction on the Site C dam project.