If you caught today's issue of the Kamloops Daily News, I hope you had the opportunity to read David Charbonneau's column Eye View. Although his views are typically well left of center, he makes compelling arguments that one shouldn't dismiss regardless of their political bent.
This morning under the headline "A stable base to the economy is created with fair contracts", Mr. Charbonneau examined the treatment of collective labour agreements by the Liberal government, which unilaterally imposed new contracts after being elected in 2001. Recently the Supreme Court of Canada created new law when it reversed years of existing jurisprudence and enshrined the right to collective bargaining. Mr. Charbonneau's column painted a predictable caricature of the Liberal's policy changes of the day as simplistic, mean-spirited, and harmful to both individuals and the economy.
One could certainly make the argument that all of those characterizations apply. But how does that argument resonate when the shoe is on the other foot?
You might well recall the sad state of small business affairs in BC throughout the 90's when the NDP was in power. I recall speaking at the time with a previously successful builder in the line-up at Overwaitea, who related how he had closed up shop and had retired to the Shuswap, where he would wait until the government changed before getting back into the game. Why? He said it was just too difficult to slog through the run-away red tape the government of the day had implemented. He had previously managed to earn a living for himself and his workers for at least twenty years, but was now up against a business environment that forced him to close up shop.
Now to be fair, there were certainly other issues that affected builders at that time, including an economy in the late 90's suffering from aftermath of the Asian flu. However the situation was certainly not improved by the NDP government; in fact it was exacerbated. BC brought up the rear in Canada in terms of economic, investment, and employment growth, while achieving first place in respect to increases in business bankruptcies. Much like the workers affected by the Liberal's policies in 2001, the small business owners of the 90's were set upon by the government of the day.
The impact on the ground was very similar then as now; small business owners had families to support, as did their workers, and so on down the line of businesses and workers that had depended upon the economic activity that relocated to other provinces or ceased altogether. The impact at the personal level was devastating, but the overall cascading impact upon small business practically stopped the province in its tracks.
So where is the protection for small business from governments that discard fair and predictable business conditions as we saw under the previous government? And more to Mr. Charbonneau's point, where is the protection of the "stable base to the economy" in a province where labour and regulatory regimes flip-flop between political poles?
Well first, let's agree on where BC's economy is based. Counter to Mr. Charbonneau's premise, it's not the public sector, it's the private sector. To be more specific, it's small business.
According to Western Economic Diversification Canada's Small Business Profile 2006, 48% of the entire provincial workforce (well over a million people) is employed by small business, as opposed to the public sector which employs just 17% of the workforce. 20% of the BC workforce is self-employed, and over a third of those self-employed workers are women. More than a quarter of BC's GDP is produced by small businesses. 
The economic base of the provincial economy is small business. Government policies that harm small business create at least as much personal hardship and economic devastation as the policies against which Mr. Charbonneau rails.
While it is difficult to predict the full impact of the court's ruling, it's plain to see that it has created certainty for workers affected by collective bargaining; legislators can't tear up collective agreements moving forward. Small businesses don't negotiate collective agreements with the government, so small businesses and the workers they employ have little legal recourse to unfair or harmful legislation.
There is no collective contract between small business and government, so small business will never qualify for court-imposed certainty. Despite Mr. Charbonneau's claims, fair contracts do not create a stable base to the economy. Rather, a stable base to the economy is created only insofar as legislators allow small businesses the opportunity to grow and innovate within a predictable regulatory regime.
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Leong’s motion drew the Labour Council out of the peanut gallery long enough for it demonstrate how completely out of its depth it was on the issue. Rather than seizing the opportunity to engage Leong, Labour Council President Karen Cerniuk instead folded her tent and complained that Leong didn't understand her organization’s affairs. That flat-footed response, of course, is exactly what Leong was looking for; Ms. Cerniuk confirmed that the labour group really doesn't have a role to play in determining if, where, or by whom a hotel will be built.
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