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Comment: Victoria far from alone with bridge steel problems

If misery loves company, Victoria residents are not alone in their unfortunate situation with the new Johnson Street Bridge cost overruns and project delays.

If misery loves company, Victoria residents are not alone in their unfortunate situation with the new Johnson Street Bridge cost overruns and project delays.

By any measure, Victoria’s problems with the Blue Bridge replacement are significant: deficient steel fabricated in China helped lead to a $63-million project estimate in 2009 ballooning to $100 million today and counting.

And instead of opening as planned on Sept. 30, the new estimate is June 30, 2017.

But as bad as that is, Victoria has been fortunate by comparison with other bridge projects around the world that have been seriously compromised by poor-quality Chinese steel.

The worst example is California’s famous Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland — with cost overruns of an astonishing $5 billion above the original estimated price of $1.4 billion, and years of delays.

California found more than 1,700 weld defects in bridge sections supplied by Chinese steel fabrication firm Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industry Company — all repaired at enormous cost.

Sound familiar? In Victoria, the scale is much smaller but one common element is Chinese fabricated steel not meeting quality requirements, causing significant and costly delays.

That happened after Victoria signed a contract with PCL Constructors Westcoast that left the bridge contractor — not the city — to decide where to procure steel, and it came from China.

With these and similar problems costing taxpayers money and time, the question is: Why would any public project go offshore to get its fabricated steel?

And why would British Columbia risk losing its steel-fabrication industry that supports 5,000 direct and thousands more indirect jobs, with annual revenues of $1.5 billion?

In Victoria, the 112-year-old Ramsay Machine Works steel-fabrication firm closed in August — after the Johnson Street Bridge project bought its steel in China.

Just two years ago, president Greg Ramsay warned: “We need investment in B.C. or we will die.” Now those jobs are gone.

Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps voted against the new bridge as a councillor, fearing the cost overruns that have become all too real — and that decision helped make her mayor in last year’s election.

Now the goal for Helps and city council must be to ensure that lessons are learned so future projects — such as Victoria’s new Fire Station No. 1 — do not have similar problems.

But Victoria’s challenges face all municipalities and the province. Every project could see equally costly and unnecessary expenses and delays, unless procurement policies are improved to protect Canadian steel-fabrication jobs.

Some argue that if Canadian firms can’t compete with foreign companies, they don’t deserve contracts, but that’s simply wrong.

British Columbia has some of the best steel-fabrication companies and most highly skilled workers in the world, producing amazing structures.

Burnaby’s George Third and Son just completed the impressive steel and wood awnings for Vancouver’s new Telus Gardens building, as well as steel structures for a New Guinea liquefied natural gas plant. And, working with Canron of Delta, the two firms did significant steel fabrication for the Seattle Seahawks’ and Mariners’ stadiums.

Port Coquitlam’s Dynamic Structures has built about half the world’s mega-telescopes, while its amusement-ride division’s projects include Disney’s Space Mountain.

So much for not being internationally competitive.

But our industry cannot compete against foreign producers with completely inadequate environmental standards, significant government subsidies and workers paid low wages with few human or labour rights or safety protection, let alone democratic freedoms.

That defines unfair competition. And it’s also unfair when our governments don’t evaluate bids on an equal basis.

Taxpayers deserve to have the value of creating jobs and investment in Canada considered, because we gain enormous revenue from taxes paid by steel-fabrication workers and corporations.

Unfortunately, in 2012 Canada imported $1 billion worth of steel from China, plus another $400 million from Japan and $300 million from South Korea.

That means tens of thousands of lost jobs in our own country, while we finance creating them in other lands through tax dollars.

The solution is simple. On major government projects, Canadian suppliers of goods such as steel fabrication should face only fair competition from foreign companies, while respecting existing trade agreements.

After seeing Victoria’s bridge problems, insisting on fair trade to guarantee jobs for Canadians and a fair deal for taxpayers has to be a worthwhile position for any government to take.

Eric Bohne represents Ironworkers union manufacturing locals across Canada.