Good morning.

My name is Patrick Campbell. I'm the Canadian regional director of the International Union of Operating Engineers. It's an honour to present here today before the committee.

Prior to being the Canadian regional director, I was the Canadian pipeline director for the IUOE for nearly a decade.

The IUOE represents the heavy equipment operators and mechanics, who play a critical role in unionized pipeline construction in Canada. Any piece of heavy equipment, large or small, on unionized pipeline projects is operated and maintained by our members across Canada.

The Trans Mountain expansion project is 980 kilometres in length. This 36-inch pipeline spans from Strathcona County, Alberta to Burnaby, British Columbia.

When you consider the terrain and highly technical nature, this project had no shortage of technical challenges throughout construction. From the rigours of the Canadian wilderness to the challenges of urban pipelining, as a project the complexities were immense. The project had an archeological component to it of a scale never before seen in Canada.

Make no mistake, the successful completion of this project is a Canadian engineering marvel, constructed through the toughest pipeline terrain by Canadians for Canadians.

Place on top of these technical challenges the impacts of events beyond the control of project management. Regulatory delays pushed the construction timeline of the project into the busiest pipeline construction window in Canadian history. This project was forced to compete for contractors, subcontractors, equipment, suppliers and skilled labour with similar pipeline megaprojects, for instance, the Coastal GasLink project, which was 690 kilometres of 48-inch pipeline; the natural gas transmission expansion program, which was taking place in B.C. and Alberta at the same time; and several mainline pipeline projects in Ontario, not to mention LNG Canada.

On top of technical and construction market pressures, add in the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which gripped the globe and created challenges the project management team had never seen before in ensuring that employees could safely continue to build the project.

In 2021, we saw the atmospheric rivers in B.C., which caused flooding and mudslides in the region. Washouts exposed the original line 1, forcing it to shut down for close to a month. This shutdown brought to bear how vital this pipeline infrastructure is to British Columbians. The flooding caused the Coldwater River to re-route, destroying much of the already constructed right-of-way on spread 5A. This caused a three-month delay in construction.

This accurately sets out those elements of the project that were beyond the control of project management and contributed significantly to the cost escalation of the project.

I would now like to focus on an element of the project that was well within the control of the original project proponent, Kinder Morgan Canada: the labour procurement model. Despite the fact that the four pipeline unions, together with our Canadian membership and our PLCAC contractors, have constructed over 90% of any B or CER pipelines in Canada, and despite our having just completed 100% of the Enbridge line 3 project, spanning over 1,000 kilometres, ahead of schedule, the original project proponent, Kinder Morgan Canada, set out to construct the Trans Mountain expansion project with no Canadian PLCAC contractors and no Canadian unionized pipeline construction labour.

This approach was in stark contrast to the Enbridge labour procurement model, which de-risked the entire line 3 by building their project 100% union with a project labour agreement. This ensured labour continuity for their entire line 3 pipeline replacement project.

Eventually, out of necessity, the Trans Mountain project proponent engaged our contractors and members in order to complete the project, and PLCAC contractors and our members constructed spreads 1, 4B, 6 and 7A, representing four of the nine construction spreads on the project.

The PLCAC four trades, now late to the project, developed a PLA to cover the work on these four spreads, with terms and conditions less than those being paid on the CGL and the NGTL expansion projects, creating labour uncertainty.

Based on the reduced union rates, with the first union shovel hitting the ground on the project in June 2020, the reduced union rates contained in the PLA were escalated by 2% in 2021and 2% in 2022. Those rates have been held since May 1, 2022, with our members not having seen an increase to their compensation package on this project since, despite many members still performing final cleanup to return the pipeline right-of-way to the same condition they found it in.

The labour procurement model that was instituted on this project well before the intervention of the federal government was ill conceived from the outset and, we would argue, presented yet another significant costing challenge for the project. However, it was far from the only challenge this project faced.

Despite all of these significant challenges, a world-class piece of pipeline infrastructure has been constructed to the highest standards, allowing Canadian energy to access new markets.

I am happy to answer any questions you may have regarding the unionized labour component of this project.