Last August, Stephen Hunt, director of the United Steelworkers in Western Canada, asked for an urgent meeting with British Columbia Premier John Horgan.
With construction starting on the $1.4-billion project to replace the Pattullo Bridge — which spans the Fraser River just southeast of Vancouver, and stands out as one of the larger infrastructure projects in the country — Hunt, along with other leaders from the USW, urged Horgan to buy the steel for the bridge from a Canadian producer.
“It would be unconscionable for the government of B.C., or any Canadian government, to use its power of procurement to award contracts to bidders that would source their steel from offshore,” Hunt wrote in a letter to Horgan, signed along with two other union leaders.
His entreaties made no difference: the contractor building the bridge sourced the structural steel from China, according to a spokeswoman for the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, who stopped responding to questions seeking more details.
