In CEO Jimenez’s rebuttal to my December 15 Times Colonist opinion piece, he claims that BC Ferries has strong governance and does not deploy defective vessels. I argue that the corporation’s “sustainable proposal” to secure significantly increased funding to avoid fare hikes exceeding 30% should be rejected until governance is reformed. Jimenez’s claim that governance has improved since the early 2000s is contradicted by ample evidence of a governance vacuum enabling BC Ferries to avoid transparency and accountability for wasting tax dollars and deploying defective vessels.
Although Jimenez claims BC Ferries values transparency, its history of intentionally avoiding transparency tells a different story. In 2003 BC Ferries campaigned for and was granted exemption from the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. In 2009 the FOI, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and Canadian Federation of Taxpayers appealed to the BC Comptroller General to review the effect of shielding the corporation from scrutiny and accountability. His report describes a “culture of secrecy and entitlement” that allowed executives to enrich themselves while imposing steep fare increases, cutting service, and inflicting economic damage on island residents. BC Ferries was then restored to the FOI Act in 2010.
However, the government, aided by the BC Ferry Commissioner and BC Ferry Authority, who are tasked with providing independent oversight, have systematically enabled BC Ferries to deny or heavily redact FOI requests to the present. Only one of 34 FOI requests for financial and performance data for the Denman Island cable ferry, for example, has been released. BC Ferries also redacted six pages of an eight-page decision paper released to the Transportation Standing Committee reviewing the $1 billion loan for the Chinese-built vessel contract. In an effort to keep details about this controversial purchase secret, a BC Ferries lawyer argued in Parliament that the Committee’s demand for FOI data was illegal and “outside of its constitutional authority.”
Although Bill 7, which was passed in 2022 providing the BC Ferry Authority power to issue binding resolutions, it has not filed a single resolution to mitigate the corporation’s pattern of denying FOI requests, filing misleading reports, and deploying defective vessels. The Commissioner has similarly failed in her overarching mandate “to balance the needs of customers and taxpayers while ensuring the corporation’s sustainability,” as proven by the corporation’s escalating debt and pattern of deploying unreliable vessels like the 1999 fast ferries that cost taxpayers $1 billion.
Protected from scrutiny, BC Ferries follows a predictable script when deploying defective vessels like the Denman Island cable ferry and the Quadra Island hybrids: it dismisses chronic breakdowns as “teething issues” that can be repaired, and engages in a system of denial and underreporting of failures that are strongly contradicted by internal records and customer complaints.
For ten years the Commissioner has accepted BC Ferries’ claim that the cable ferry provides service “on a par” with conventional vessels, despite her access to contradictory evidence such as the one set of released FOI data from deployment in 2016 to 2019 that included 80 pages of breakdowns due to five unresolved mechanical issues confirmed in the 2023 Anderson Review. This review also confirmed that the vessel costs more and runs slower than projected—$5.9 million annually, not $230 thousand.
The two Quadra hybrids reflect the same pattern of corporate denial, dismissal of evidence, and deflection. Statistics from 2021 to 2022, when the hybrids were launched, prove that the vessels were not designed for the Quadra route’s high winds: cancellations due to mechanical breakdowns increased from 0 to 93; weather-related cancellations increased from 4 to 167; and total cancellations increased from 6 to 334 in a single year. Despite the corporation’s claim the issues could be fixed, the Commissioner urged the corporation to replace and reroute the vessels. However, her acceptance of keeping the cable ferry for budget reasons for a tenth year of iffy service demonstrates her selective oversight.
Without transparency enabling public accountability and strong governance and consistent enforcement, BC Ferries will continue wasting tax dollars that could fund improvements in affordable housing and healthcare, and island communities will continue to suffer unreliable service that cripples their quality of life and economies.
