Dear Editor:
I have urged the federal Transportation Standing Committee to examine the 1999 Fast Ferries audit before approving B.C. Ferries’ loan guarantees for the Chinese-built vessels. This scathing rebuke of the B.C.government was intended as a warning. Rather than heeding this warning, however, the government’s hands-off and contradictory approach to B.C. Ferries decisions and practices accounts for the same failures repeating throughout the fleet for 26 years.
The Baynes Sound Connector cable ferry serving Denman Island exemplifies this pattern of not learning from the Fast Ferries failures. Despite having the fleet’s highest mechanical breakdown rate and costing $5.9M annually, not the projected $230,000 to run annually, the government claims it cannot intervene to compel B.C. Ferries to decommission a failed cable ferry experiment. Yet it authorized replacing Quadra Island’s two new Island Class hybrid vessels after scrutinizing their service problems. This indicates that their impotence to oversee corporate actions is highly selective.
Although promising transparency, under CEO Jimenez’s leadership B.C. Ferries systematically repeats the Fast Ferries failures by denying Freedom of Information requests; underreporting service cancellations; submitting contradictory and confusing reports; and firing the Ferry Advisory Committee members after the Commissioner directed the corporation to significantly improve its engagement efforts with l3 ferry-dependent communities. B.C. Ferries’ positive but highly general report of the new digital engagement system cannot be trusted, despite the government’s faith that the new system would be more inclusive.
Contradictory government actions are indicated also by allocating $500M to keep fares low, but approving a recent indirect high fare hike. By denying reservation refunds and eliminating or substantially reducing non-reserved spots on the long runs, customer costs have increased indirectly by more than $20. CEO Jimenez’s recent announcement of a 30% fare increase by 2028 indicates that to prevent fares from skyrocketing, the corporation will need more tax dollar bailouts.
Clearly, a corporation that repeats Fast Ferries failures with impunity cannot be trusted with additional public money. And a government that has the authority to allocate millions, but has not reintroduced tabled Coastal Ferry Act Amendment Bill 7, which would give the government essential oversight power, cannot be trusted to approve additional tax bailouts that will likely create more failures like the Baynes Sound cable ferry and the Island Class hybrid vessels.
Respectfully,
Sharon Small,
Denman Island
