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Despite diversification, British Columbia’s economy relies heavily on primary industries for prosperity, and the hope is to rebuild urban-rural connections through Indigenous-led initiatives.

By Resource Works
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Since the 1970s, British Columbia’s economy has diversified. However, the raw materials sector remains the most important and most profitable sector. Simply put, investing in resource industries provides more bang for your buck – higher incomes, taxes, exports, spin-offs – simply broader prosperity.

Diversification is good and should continue. But not at the expense and neglect of resources, production and media.

Diversification into industries such as tourism, accommodation, food services, entertainment, film, television and culture brings fewer benefits, generates lower income and lower tax revenues. Technology and professional services generate more value, but are not on par with the resources and industrial sectors. The path to a larger and healthier services sector is through a larger and healthier resources sector.

It is not surprising that resource sectors have little support outside of rural British Columbia and, increasingly, indigenous communities. Seventy percent of British Columbia’s population lives in Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and Greater Victoria, where people have no personal, political or cultural connections to the people who live and work in resource communities.

This separation wasn’t always like this. When I lived and worked as a logger in Campbell River in the early 1970s, rural and urban people were cut from the same cloth. When I moved to Metro Vancouver in 1977, it was obvious that the fabric was fraying.

At that time, harvesting, processing and production of raw materials were carried out throughout the entire voivodeship, in large cities, small towns, towns, villages and camps.

In fact, Metro Vancouver was home to the province’s highest concentration of resource processing, manufacturing and export facilities. Paper mills, pulp mills, sawmills, fishing plants, shipyards, shipyards, steel and iron mills, and marine terminals that exported grain, coal, ore concentrates, timber, pulp, and paper along the shores of Burrard Inlet, Howe Sound, False Creek, and the Fraser River.

Thousands of Metro Vancouverites supported their families by working remotely. They flew and sailed to the camps of lumberjacks, miners and fishermen. Millers, welders, mechanics, and construction workers regularly traveled to rural and remote regions of British Columbia to build and provide maintenance for processing and manufacturing plants.

Many thousands of Metro Vancouver residents were, like me, recent immigrants from rural British Columbia. Many more had relatives living inland and on the coast.

City dwellers could see, hear and feel the province’s natural resource management at their fingertips. The connection was more intimate; it was social and psychological in nature.

The trade union movement was the strongest substance cementing the bond between rural and urban workers.

The bulk of the post-World War II labor movement was made up of workers who harvested resources, processed and manufactured goods from those resources, and transported both resources and manufactured goods. Public sector and service sector workers were an emerging group in the trade union movement in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

The driving force of the labor movement was the large trade unions.

Unions such as the Carpenters’ International Union of America, the United Steelworkers of America, the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union, the Canadian Papermakers’ Union, the Canadian Paperworkers’ Union, the Canadian Boilermakers’ Union, the Building Trades Union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and the Seamen’s International Union membership and influence throughout province.

There was weakness. There were only isolated cases of widespread indigenous participation in trade unions. The United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union consisted of large numbers of indigenous people, particularly on the north coast. UFAWU has worked with the Native Brotherhood of BC on several negotiations and campaigns. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union had significant indigenous participation in Port Alberni and Lax Kw’alaams.

At the municipal level, these unions organized themselves into Labor Councils. This provided a platform for political, civic and cultural activities in each community. There was hardly a town that didn’t have a Union Hall or two. Union Halls preceded local civic centers that hosted meetings, weddings, children’s Christmas parties, dances, memorials, and more.

At the provincial level, the BC Federation of Labor has shaped the Labor Councils into a powerful entity. The annual reunion was a star-studded event. All eyes were on it: governments, media and corporations; much of the 6 p.m. newscast was devoted to the convention every day for a week. The decisions made were felt throughout the year.

Political parties, the Labor Movement and civil society agreed that the raw materials industry is the leader of the economy. Change came as the 1970s ended, as national and global events strained the consensus.

The post-World War II surge in resource extraction and manufacturing employment, consumerism, and professional services in Western Europe, Canada, and the United States was questioned in the 1970s. This decade became known as the end of the “golden age of capitalism”.

Capitalism is not over; has grown. The countries devastated by World War II, especially Germany and Japan, were rebuilt.

Industrialization took root after the war in predominantly agricultural countries such as South Korea, China, Greece, Belgium, Italy, and other emerging countries. These countries had an advantage. They started industrialization from a modern, more productive and cheaper baseline.

Meanwhile, much of the manufacturing capacity of Britain, France, the United States and Canada was built before the Great Depression, during the war or shortly after it. They had higher costs, lower productivity and now lower investment rates.

The 1970s in Canada were a decade of “stagflation” – high inflation, high unemployment, brutal government intervention in the economy and labor unrest. The decade was marked by the recession and wage and price controls of 1973–1975 in Canada and the United States.

In B.C., forest products plants were aging and competing with modern plants, cheaper wood fiber, lower wages in Scandinavian countries, Asia and South America.

Declines in investment, productivity and market share have resulted in industry consolidation and job losses. Metro Vancouver has effectively deindustrialized, with the exception of maritime, rail, trucking, light manufacturing and warehousing.

The impact on the Trade Union Movement, especially industrial trade unions, was devastating.

According to Statistics Canada, between 1981 and 2022, unions as a percentage of the workforce dropped from 38% to 29%. Two-thirds of this decline occurred before 1997. All of the new growth occurred in the services, technology and culture sectors.

The report reached the following conclusion about resource workers:

“The decline in unionization observed among men was partly due to a shift in employment away from the manufacturing sector, a sector with traditionally high rates of unionization. However, declining union membership in goods-producing industries also played a role.

For example, union membership fell by 13 to 19 percentage points from the early 1980s to the late 1990s among men employed in forestry, mining, manufacturing, and construction (Morissette, Schellenberg, and Johnson 2005).

The decline in unionization was greater in British Columbia than in Canada as a whole, at 14.7% compared with 9%.

In the 1970s, the physical, social and psychological connections between Metro Vancouver, Greater Victoria, the Fraser Valley and rural British Columbia were severed, although the resources sector remains a major source of the economy to this day.

Today there is hope that it will be possible to reconstruct the physical, social and psychological links between people working in public administration, services, technology and cultural industries and people working in raw materials, industry and transport.

Underpinning this hope is the tremendous progress being made by First Nations-led or Native-owned businesses and organizations that directly own significant investments in real estate, resource projects, utilities and local businesses in communities in every corner of the province.

This time with the full participation and leadership of indigenous communities.

Jim Rushton is a 46-year veteran of BC’s resources and transportation sectors with experience in union representation, economic development and terminal management.

Despite diversification, British Columbia’s economy relies heavily on primary industries for prosperity, and the hope is to rebuild urban-rural connections through Indigenous-led initiatives.

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