When the NDP government fired 小蓝视频 Ferries’ CEO last April, the promise was simple: This will help things get better at the problem-plagued ferry system.
But more than a year later, the situation at 小蓝视频 Ferries is worse than ever. The corporation remains a mess of staff shortages, ship failures and furious customers. There’s no end in sight to the problems.
The Canada Day long weekend is looking like a chaotic snarl of delays and lines — with one major vessel out for repair, thousands of reservations shuffled, massive waits and overflowing terminals.
So it was little surprise that Premier David Eby started getting hit with questions about the state of 小蓝视频 Ferries this week. After all, it was the NDP that fired the last CEO, and Eby who hand-picked the new leadership regime. The current provincial government has direct control of 小蓝视频 Ferries, by its own choosing, for better or for worse.
"I don't find it acceptable,” Eby said of the current service. “But I do understand the challenges that 小蓝视频 Ferries faces for the long term.
“小蓝视频 Ferries has the capital plan in place to get those new boats in place to ensure that people can get where they need to get and I want to thank British Columbians for their patience this weekend. And I want to encourage 小蓝视频 Ferries to redouble their efforts to ensure timely affordable access for British Columbians.”
The premier makes it sound like 小蓝视频 Ferries is on the verge of major solutions with new boats. But the capital plan he referenced won’t put six major new vessels into service until 2030. The public won’t tolerate a seven-year time-frame for improvements.
There is something the NDP government could do at 小蓝视频 Ferries to produce much faster results: Boost the provincial subsidy.
To be fair, the province did give 小蓝视频 Ferries $500 million earlier this year. But it was one-time money earmarked to avoid a forecasted spike in annual fare increases of almost 10 per cent, and also to help electrify the fleet so that the NDP can more easily meet its climate goals.
小蓝视频 Ferries contends that its major problem is a staffing shortage, particularly among skilled mariners who are required in certain numbers by Transport Canada. Many have been lured away by private firms. Others are close to retiring, with nobody to replace them.
The province provides more than $200 million a year to the ferry corporation. It could boost the amount to increase salaries to a more-than-competitive rate, offer recruitment bonuses for key positions and create financial incentives for the right skilled staff to come back to 小蓝视频 Ferries at the right locations.
More money to get more people certified as quickly as possible, in the right areas, would be welcome too.
Ideally, all of this should have started more than a year ago, when 173 cancelled sailings sparked a crisis that forced out the CEO. But the NDP government felt (wrongly) it was a leadership problem at 小蓝视频 Ferries.
The leadership problem, though, is at the provincial level, by politicians who open the purse strings only when scared about the public backlash over ticket prices.
Both the previous Liberal government, and the current NDP government, have been loathe to add much more to the annual operating subsidy for 小蓝视频 Ferries, preferring instead to demand efficiencies from the corporation as it struggles to serve a rising population with shrinking staff.
The NDP wants to keep 小蓝视频 Ferries in the same quasi-private corporate structure the 小蓝视频 Liberals created, so that billions in ferry debt is off the provincial books and carried privately by the corporation.
But it won’t let 小蓝视频 Ferries raise ticket prices, because of political backlash. And it won’t let 小蓝视频 Ferries act like a private company would, by cutting service on unprofitable routes to refocus resources on major crisis areas — because ferries are considered an essential public service, and have to run at a loss on most routes.
So the mess at 小蓝视频 Ferries continues.
It’s an extension of the provincial highway system, underfunded by the province, masquerading as a private business, unable to offer competitive compensation, while not allowed to reduce its service or raise its prices to solve its many problems.
Something in that equation has got to give. Or the chaos at 小蓝视频 Ferries will just continue.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 15 years covering 小蓝视频 politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on C小蓝视频 Radio. [email protected]
