BC Ferries Million Dollar No-Fault Executive Payouts Reward Failure
Despite the Comptroller General characterizing BC Ferries as a “culture of secrecy and enrichment” in 2009, executives continue receiving secret “no-fault” million-dollar exit payouts that violate the Coastal Ferry Act. These taxpayer “safe harbour” exit payments help to explain why successive CEOs perpetuate the same failures dating to the Fast Ferries scandal in 1999—with impunity. At the same time, Premier David Eby is cutting $1.4 billion from affordable housing, stalling hospital and health care projects, freezing funding for promised affordable child care, and eliminating 15,000 public sector jobs, claiming these cuts are inevitable given the province’s record-breaking debt. Continuing to increase funding for BC Ferries’ broken business model and declining service, however, is not fiscally inevitable.
In response to BC Ferries’ record-breaking debt and projected fare increases in excess of 30%, CEO Nicolas Jimenez proposes receiving substantially increased funding from all levels of government—not to “clean up” his predecessor’s failures, but to maintain an untenable status quo that violates the Coastal Ferry Act’s over-arching mandate to provide “safe and reliable service in a cost-effective manner.” The following “no fault” severance packages both shield and reward successive CEOs for repeating documented failures that could be averted with transparency and enforceable governance:
Mark Collins (CEO 2017–2022): Fired in July 2022 for 173 sailing cancellations in 28 days, approving an 18.3% executive raise while suppressing union wages, and deploying defective “green fleet” vessels. His “no-fault” payout was $1.3 million including 24-month salary continuation of $534,589, benefits, and $88,269 accrued vacation—kept secret.
Corrine Storey (Chief Operating Officer 2017–2024): Asked to quietly take early retirement for overlooking Coastal Class motor failures costing taxpayers hundreds of millions. Her “no-fault” payout was $1.1 million including 24-month salary continuation of $528,127, benefits, and undisclosed vacation time—kept secret.
Nicolas Jimenez (CEO 2023–present): Hired ostensibly to clean up his predecessor’s failures, if fired today after three years, Jimenez’s exit package would be $1.4 million including 24-month salary continuation of $530,441, benefits, and accrued vacation, plus a 120-month “bridge” pension that could total $600,000 additional if his ICBC pension exceeded his BC Ferries pension by $5,000 monthly—kept secret.
While “without cause” termination clauses are standard for Crown executives, they are legally paired with an 18-month salary continuance cap and Treasury Board approval. Severances in the private sector strongly scrutinize rare “no-fault” clauses and also limit salary continuance to 18 months. By exceeding public and private sector severances, BC Ferries executive exit payouts violate the Coastal Ferry Act; and because the corporation is neither Crown nor private, executive payouts bypass provincial guardrails. This explains why Jimenez, for example, is free to exceed his predecessor’s failures by:
- Escalating conflict with the BC Ferry and Marine Workers Union: Union President Eric McNeely states that arbitration under Jimenez’s leadership is the most “difficult” since the corporation was privatized, that the arbitrated 1.65% wage award is devoid of logical justification, and that BC Ferries is waging “psychological warfare” on workers by even removing kettles and coffee pots from vessels — while executives received 28.95% salary increases since 2022.
- Systematically denying FOI requests for defective new procurements claiming “business secrecy” — including the decision paper demanded by the federal Transportation Standing Committee on BC Ferries’ contract for Chinese-built vessels, arguing the committee was acting outside its constitutional authority.
- Gaslighting the public with a 99.9% service metric that counts breakdowns as delays rather than cancellations — the more honest 83.3% delay metric tells a different story.
- Withholding the 2023 Shirocca report from the federal committee — which faulted BC Ferries for accepting low rather than accurate foreign bids, deferring repair expenses, ignoring expert advice, and lacking transparency when vessels fail.
- Claiming the lowest procurement price is prudent and in alignment with the Coastal Ferry Act: accepting the lowest bid for Chinese-built vessels despite the Act mandating “cost-effective” — not cheapest — service, and ordering four new vessels from the same Romanian shipyard that delivered the highly defective Island Class vessels.
- Claiming the Denman cable ferry is a “green asset” despite using two-and-a-half times more fuel than a conventional vessel and requiring frequent annual replacement of one-mile-long stainless steel cable costing an estimated $230,000, shipped from abroad.
- Disbanding the Ferry Advisory Committees that provided 30 years of volunteer community oversight, while claiming to listen to customers.
When 35 coastal leaders representing the Union of BC Municipalities met with Eby demanding accountability for chronic service unreliability, he claimed helplessness as the province is “at arm’s length” from a corporation it created, wholly owns, and subsidizes. When they met with Jimenez demanding the Ferry Advisory Committees be reinstated and a timeline for change to reverse the corporation’s “existential threat” to coastal communities, he claimed he was “out of options” due to having an underfunded and ageing fleet.
This is not political theatre—it is political farce that will continue to be sponsored by taxpayers who witness funding for affordable housing, healthcare and jobs cut due to rising provincial debt and Eby’s resolve to keep the farce performing. Without transparency and reform, customers and taxpayers will continue funding executive payouts that reward them for a deteriorating essential service and fracturing marine highway. How long will this farce keep running that shields BC Ferries executives, the regulators and government from accountability?
