British Columbia Maritime Employers' Association

The BCMEA currently consists of sixty-seven member companies with commercial interests based on the waterfronts of Vancouver and other seaports in British Columbia.

The Shipping Federation was established during what Canadian historians have called the Canadian Labour Revolt in the period following World War I, which peaked in Canada with the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919. the Employers felt they needed to band together, not only because port operations were becoming increasingly complex, but as a bulwark against unionism generally, and union militancy in particular.

By the time the next strike erupted on Vancouver's waterfront, the Shipping Federation had adopted an even more rigidly anti-union policy, influenced by its recent association with counterparts in the United States, who were following what had been dubbed the American Plan.

The civic administration of Mayor Gerry McGeer, along with his chief constable, Colonel Foster had joined with the Shipping Federation to defeat the Communist threat.

The strike peaked with the July 18, 1935 Battle of Ballantyne Pier, where the police clashed with strikers and their supporters who had attempted to march down to the harbour.

Three levels of police were on hand, plus a plethora of special constables, organized in part by the Shipping Federation's Citizens' League of British Columbia, a vigilante group it funded to fight the strike and generate anti-strike/anticommunist propaganda.

The Shipping Federation stepped back from it overt anticommunism, but continued to fund a variation of the Citizens' League, the Industrial Association of British Columbia under the leadership of Colonel C. E. Edgett, former police chief, prison warden, and leading local anticommunist polemicist.