How British Columbia is using a Community Benefits Agreement to implement progressive social and employment objectives in its construction industry

There is an extensive literature on using construction procurement to achieve social justice objectives through Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs). These require developers to share project benefits, such as subsidized housing, community centres, childcare facilities, recreational programmes, parks and, occasionally, direct compensation with affected communities. A subset of CBAs focuses primarily on employment and training benefits, particularly for local communities and designated equity groups. However, these CBAs often fail to achieve their promised results because they rely on contractors and unions to deliver their progressive social and equity objectives on construction sites. Government efforts to maximize training and employment benefits from their procurement fall short because they do not control onsite employment practices. This article assesses the British Columbia (BC) government’s decision to establish a public corporation, BC Infrastructure Benefits (BCIB), to overcome these deficiencies by directly employing the construction workforce. Contractors still supervise the work but must use BCIB's unionized workers under the terms of their procurement contracts. Its CBA with the building unions includes ten major public infrastructure projects. BCIB’s innovative payroll-based employment data tracking system has documented over 7.5 million onsite employment hours between 2018 and 2024, confirming that its local hire, training and equity employment outcomes are overcoming key weaknesses of other private and public CBAs.