By Natalie Bruckner
After nearly two decades of persistent advocacy, the British Columbia Construction Association (BCCA) and fellow industry partners have brought the construction sector one step closer to seeing prompt payment legislation enacted in British Columbia.
The pace of progress elsewhere makes BC’s delay all the more striking. Ontario introduced its prompt payment legislation in 2019, followed by Alberta and Saskatchewan in 2022, with New Brunswick following suit in 2023. In 2025, Manitoba also established a prompt payment regime, and Quebec is moving toward similar measures, reflecting a growing nationwide recognition of the need for payment certainty in construction. Yet in all this time, as BCCA president Chris Atchison points out, BC has remained “willfully and woefully behind.”
For those in the sheet metal industry in BC, prompt payment would mean contractors can submit timely invoices and receive payment regularly throughout a project, rather than waiting months to get paid in full. Under the proposed legislation, owners are required to pay contractors within 28 days of receiving a proper invoice, unless a non-payment notice is issued within 14 days to explain any dispute or delay.
“Some owners or contractors who already see timely payment may see this as unnecessary or disruptive,” Atchison says. “But we know from our annual industry survey that 91 percent of trades and general contractors are paid late. The legislation is aimed to set a benchmark and protect those left vulnerable under the current system. We want to set a standard that allows everyone to thrive.”
Despite recent concerns that progress has stalled, Atchison assures it is anything but. In fact, the BCCA has been pressing even harder. “In April 2025, during Construction and Skilled Trades Month, the province committed to assigning a team in the attorney general’s office to review our recommendations and to bring forward draft legislation, with the intent to table it in the fall sitting,” he says. “It is now in the hands of legislative drafters, hence the silence, and we’re optimistic it will be introduced and passed, and then followed by the drafting of regulations.”
As with any legislation, the process has been slow and arduous. When Atchison joined the BCCA eight years ago, prompt payment was a significant problem but still a low-priority advocacy issue. “Over time, however, more boards, including our regional associations, SMACNA-BC, the BC Building Trades, and electrical and mechanical contractors, formed a ‘consortium of the willing’ to push for it,” he says.
Though prompt payment has never been what Atchison calls a “sexy” political topic, the successive BC governments began to take note. Another major step occurred two years ago when Attorney General Niki Sharma engaged with the issue, studying BCCA’s cross-jurisdictional research and reviewing the recommendations.
“She has done her homework on this, not just taking our word for it, but conducting her own research,” Atchison notes.
A surprising yet positive factor has been the recent focus by federal and provincial leaders on removing internal trade barriers to strengthen the Canadian economy. This push for harmonization has further fueled momentum for prompt payment legislation in BC.
“It is up to BC to become more aligned, not more alienated, and to be more aligned means adopting a form of payment certainty for the entire supply chain to remain competitive with what other jurisdictions are doing and with what the federal government has done,” Atchison says. “This also supports interprovincial trade harmonization. If BC does not align, we risk losing contractors to provinces where their livelihoods are better protected.”
Given the scale of BC’s construction industry, estimated at around $330 billion in active projects and employing hundreds of thousands, the current lack of payment certainty is, as Atchison puts it, “unacceptable.”
“This isn’t just about when contractors get paid; sometimes it is if they don’t get paid at all,” he adds. “Being paid late can be just as damaging as not being paid because companies still accrue debt, carry lines of credit, and pay their workers. Government is a major investor in infrastructure, involving large general and trade contractors as well as smaller firms and independent operators. Without prompt payment protections, we put them all at risk. I have told the government this for years—if you are investing in building BC, you cannot be enabling businesses to go out of business.”
While BCCA will continue to advocate persistently, and Atchison credits SMACNA for its engagement, he advises the sector to prepare for what comes next.
“People can go online to promptpayment.ca and petition, and we read all feedback,” he says. “But more importantly, SMACNA members should continue educating themselves on what this new payment framework will look like and the transition toward a system that fully embraces payment certainty.
“As an industry, we are known to adapt. We did it through COVID, and now we need to adapt to a system that has existed in the UK for decades and Ontario for nearly a decade. We need to adopt industry best practices and develop our own version of payment certainty legislation instead of allowing continued erosion of confidence in BC’s construction sector.” ■
