B.C. gravel truckers’ union suing Conservative MLA over alleged defamation

Langley-Abbotsford MLA Harman Bhangu is seen in this photo from the Legislative Assembly of B.C. website. (leg.bc.ca)

A union that represents gravel truck drivers in B.C. is suing one of its members – Langley-Abbotsford MLA Harman Bhangu – over comments he made on the floor of the legislature and reposted on his social media accounts.

In a notice of civil claim filed in Vancouver on Monday, Teamsters Local 213 alleges that a speech Bhangu gave on the house floor May 8 – during which he said, among other things, that the union is engaged in “blatant corruption and systemic nepotism” – was defamatory.

Comments made on the floor of a provincial legislature are protected by “parliamentary privilege,” meaning they cannot be the subject of a defamation lawsuit.

The union argues that Bhangu’s publication of videos of his speech on multiple social media platforms, as well as the comments he made in writing in those posts, give rise to legitimate defamation claims.

“The allegations made by Mr. Bhangu are false, malicious and defamatory,” said Tony Santavenere, the union’s business manager and secretary-treasurer, in a brief statement to CTV News about the lawsuit.

“Those comments have caused damage to our organization’s character and reputation. We are confident that legal proceedings will affirm our position.”

Bhangu has not filed a response to the union’s claim in court, nor has he responded to requests for comment from CTV News.

The allegations against him have not been proven.

Bhangu’s allegedly defamatory comments centre around the union’s dispatching practices for construction projects that are subject to the Community Benefits Agreement. Examples of such projects, according to the union’s lawsuit, include the Pattullo Bridge replacement and Vancouver’s Broadway SkyTrain extension.

In its lawsuit, the union says the CBA “delineates clear rules for direct contractor hiring of owner operators by contractors, as well as the dispatch of owner operators by the plaintiff.”

“If trucks are required beyond the contractors’ employee complement, then the employers on CBA projects must submit a dispatch request to the union,” the document reads.

“To fill the dispatch request, the plaintiff will then call through their availability list of owner operator members. Once that list is exhausted, the plaintiff will call a list of individual owner operators who themselves have a collective agreement with the plaintiff called the material supply agreement (the ‘Material Supply List’). The owner operators on the Material Supply List act as employers in their own right and possess additional trucks with hired drivers. Once the Material Supply List is exhausted, the union then calls brokers to fill the dispatch request.”

In his speech in the house, which is reproduced in the lawsuit, Bhangu alleged that the union is not following this procedure, and that it is engaged in corruption and nepotism instead.

“What has happened is that they’ve created their own internal dispatch system where they pick and choose,” he said, according to the court document.

“There are people who literally got their memberships a couple of months ago, and they’re going out before members who’ve been there for 20, 30 years.”

He later added that “it always seems to be that a certain select few brokers are the ones who get the call-outs,” and noted that Amneet Sekhon, a business agent for the union, is the son of Pardaman “Paul” Sekhon, who owns a company that acts as a broker for larger contractors.

In addition to alleging that Bhangu’s claims are “false, malicious and defamatory,” the union’s lawsuit claims that Bhangu has made such allegations about the union on his social media accounts “on several occasions” since 2019.

No other posts beyond the ones containing video of his speech are cited in the notice of civil claim.

The lawsuit alleges that Bhangu’s comments have “greatly injured” the union’s reputation, and seeks general, aggravated, specific and punitive damages, as well as special costs and an injunction prohibiting Bhangu and “his agents, servants or otherwise from further posting or publishing the alleged or any similar libel.”