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The Pattullo replacement will take until 2023 to complete.

“If we’re spending a billion and a half dollars on a bridge, we should be getting something out of it other than the bridge,” said Horgan, who argued the labour rules will favour hiring local workers, Aboriginals, women and set a 25-per-cent benchmark for apprenticeship spots.

Horgan said the use of project labour agreements goes back to major B.C. Hydro dams built under Social Credit premier W.A.C. Bennett.

The Opposition Liberals have called the changes a sweetheart deal for the NDP’s major union supporters and discriminates against the almost 80 per cent of the construction sector that is not unionized.

“It’s pretty clear that the government has a preferred list of groups that they want to be receiving these contracts, and they are coincidentally the same groups that have given millions and millions of dollars to the NDP over a number of years and decades,” said Liberal MLA John Martin.

Horgan denied any favouritism, pointing out his government’s ban on corporate and union donations prevents any direct benefit from flowing back to his party.

“The fact there are no longer corporate and union donations in our political system I think cleans that up not just for my party but for parties in the future that form governments in British Columbia,” he said. “No longer can you buy access. No longer can you buy favours.”

Critics have warned the NDP’s new mandatory union construction rules could lead to cost overruns of as much as $4.8 billion on the $25.6 billion in government’s three-year capital plan, according to a letter sent to Horgan by a group of nine business and independent contractor organizations. However, that estimate assumes an approximate 40 per cent cost increase on projects and is based upon a 1990s report that examined one union-only construction project before it was completed.