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Roughly 2,000 union activists will gather this week in Vancouver to choose a new leader of the B.C. Federation of Labour. Their decision will help shape the next provincial faceoff between the government B.C. Liberals and the New Democratic Party.

Jim Sinclair is stepping down after 15 years as the province's top labour leader.

The battle to replace him will determine if the organization representing half a million unionized workers will take a more aggressive role in seeking to topple the Liberals in the next provincial election.

Organized labour was a founding partner of the NDP, but since the New Democrats' resounding defeat in 2001, the space between the two allies grew. The close affiliation was seen as a liability, and the new NDP wanted to present a more business-friendly face.

Going into the 2013 election, Adrian Dix worried about promising too much to the labour movement and other supporters who wanted the NDP leader to undo a dozen years of Liberal rule. His platform was crafted to limit expectations from his allies.

Meanwhile, B.C. Liberal Leader Christy Clark spent the campaign sporting a hard hat and talking about creating jobs.

When the NDP lost their fourth straight election, union leaders were quick to point out that the Dix campaign just didn't inspire working people.

Amber Hockin, if she wins the BC Fed leadership, wants to make sure that the NDP don't make that mistake again.

She is bluntly critical of Mr. Sinclair's leadership. His priority as the top union leader in the province was to advocate broadly for workers' rights – union and non-union alike.

At a time when union membership has declined, this was his way of keeping the organization relevant.

Ms. Hockin wants to focus on building union membership. But she also wants to revive a closer relationship with the NDP. Mr. Sinclair has always been an ally of the NDP, but he wasn't seen as an architect of the campaign.

Backed by many of the same unions that tried to force out Mr. Sinclair two years ago, Ms. Hockin says the BC Fed should be working harder to influence the province's political landscape.

"We need to move political action in the Fed forward by developing a stronger and more effective relationship with the NDP," she said in an interview. "We need to work with the NDP so that when we get to 2017, the NDP's platform is one that actually resonates with working people, something they can believe in and that they can vote for."

Ms. Hockin's list of endorsements suggests she will be a strong contender against rival Irene Lanzinger, the Fed's current secretary-treasurer.

Ms. Hockin has some large, powerful unions on her side: The Canadian Union of Public Employees BC, the United Steelworkers District 3 and the B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union. These unions are signalling they want a change in direction.

Ms. Lanzinger has lined up the support of the B.C. Teachers' Federation (she is a former president) the Hospital Employees' Union, the Health Sciences Association and Unifor. Read that as support for the status quo. Mr. Sinclair has endorsed Ms. Lanzinger as his preferred replacement.

Should the BC Fed take a more assertive role in provincial politics? Ms. Lanzinger says that the current distance respects the Fed's membership. "Some of our affiliates are non-partisan," she noted. She would continue Mr. Sinclair's work on behalf of union and non-union workers, promoting workplace safety, apprenticeship training and a higher minimum wage.

In the runup to the past election, Ms. Lanzinger recalled, she and Mr. Sinclair offered advice to the NDP on developing the party platform. "They agreed with us on some things and disagreed on others." That tension, she said, is healthy.

"When you are president of the Fed, your first responsibility is to workers. My friends in politics are the NDP, but there are times you have to be tough on your friends in politics."

On election night in 2013, Ms. Lanzinger was an ordinary volunteer working a local NDP campaign in Burnaby North. There is no doubt that NDP Leader John Horgan will have a friend in the BC Fed going into the next election.

What will be decided this Thursday, then, is whether the union's top leadership expects to be at the centre of the campaign, or will be content to stay on the sidelines.

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