" Canada Starts Here: The BC Jobs Plan . . . has three pillars to help us deal with today's economic uncertainty . . . : Working with employers and communities to enable job creation across B.C.; strengthening our infrastructure to get our goods to market [and] expanding markets for B.C. products and services ."
bcjobsplan.ca
DID Premier Christy Clark approve the B.C. Jobs Plan package before the $15 million Canada Starts Here advertisements were sprayed throughout the province?
If she did and supports its contents, then perhaps she can persuade TransLink to abandon its deal with a Dutch shipyard to build a replacement for the aging Burrard Beaver SeaBus in favour of a contract with our own Allied Shipbuilders Inc.
That's the hope of George MacPherson, president of the B.C. Shipyard Workers' union.
In a brief interview just prior to the Christmas/New Year break, he held nothing back in making his case.
Pointing to Clark's averred families-first and job creation agendas he says it makes no sense to award the contract to Netherlands-based Damen Shipyard Group.
"The spread between the Damen and Allied bids was roughly $2 million - the amount of the GST/PST," MacPherson began.
"And for that, a qualified heritage shipbuilding operation loses a 60-jobyear contract to an offshore company?"
He's right about that; Allied was the family-owned company that built our first two SeaBuses that have given trouble-free service for more than 36 years.
Such good service that communications spokesman Ken Hardie told me some years ago that, of all TransLink operations, the SeaBus came closest to paying its own way.
Although that may have changed as the vessels aged and required more maintenance, had we been given a third SeaBus over a decade ago when it was first promised at around $15 million, regular refits might have avoided today's need to send MV Burrard Beaver to Davy Jones' locker.
For more of the picture, let's examine the $2 million TransLink is said to be "saving" by going offshore, and those 60 job-years lost to North Shore shipyard workers.
Using Pay Code #1 from 2012's Payroll Deductions Tables and applying that to the $75,000 average annual salary estimated by MacPherson, this is what I found:
- CPP contributions: $2,307;
- EI contributions: $863;
- Federal income tax $11,232;
- Provincial income tax $4,080.
That's an annual contribution of $18,482 per worker going into federal/ provincial coffers, or $1.1 million for the 60 job-years.
But as we all know, income tax and ever-increasing CPP and EI levies are not the whole taxation story.
So out of the remaining +/-$56,000, each job would support the just-increased provincial Medical Services Plan premiums; municipal property taxes; gasoline and carbon taxes, ICBC and Hydro revenues, recycling fees and, to add insult to the SeaBus contract injury, TransLink levies and/or fares.
Not included in the above salary calculations are all of the product and service purchases that would be supported by a home-grown contract: mortgages/rents; extended health-care plans; electronic equipment, automobile and accessory purchases - everything right down to the sports equipment and mountain bikes so beloved in this area.
And we're still not done because, as MacPherson told me, "About two-thirds of the products required for construction of the new vessel would come from local suppliers."
Explaining that the marine electronics would likely be sourced from Portland, Ore., he said that "of the other one-third, most of those goods would come from suppliers elsewhere in Canada or in the States."
All in all, according to labour critics at bcfederationist.com, Allied and the people of B.C. stand to lose an anticipated "$75 million in spinoff or indirect benefits."
Discouraging enough on its own, this cannot be viewed as a "one-off" situation because the financials in this single contract are only one part of the B.C. employment picture.
How many times have we heard that along with the looming retirements of the rapidly aging baby-boom generation, many of the skills vital to a healthy economy will be lost?
And how many times have we been warned that we're not training enough replacement workers in the trades required for the 21st century?
Fifteen months ago we and Premier Clark were cheering because Prime Minister Stephen Harper had awarded an $8-billion contract for seven noncombat ships to North Vancouver-based Seaspan Marine Corp.
On the heels of that announcement, we were asking where B.C. would find sufficient skills for this "Proudly Canadian" company to do the job.
"They'll be trained!" said the government.
And that completes an essential part of the SeaBus picture.
As MacPherson emphasized, an Allied
contract would allow local workers to upgrade their already impressive experience to today's shipbuilding techniques - aluminum welding being but one.
All we can hope is that the premier and the Shipyard Workers' Federation can set aside philosophical differences and return the SeaBus contract to home turf.
Apart from the ad nauseam promises of a third SeaBus, TransLink owes that contract to us in return for the millions of dollars North Shore taxpayers have paid into its pot with little in the way of transit improvements to show for it.
If that's not enough - maybe the premier should just shave a few Euros from her $15million Canada Starts Here jobs budget to make up the shortfall between the Allied bid and the one from the Netherlands.
