As the provincial government engages the public on the future of ferry service, community representatives in Powell River disparage the process.
The province launched a five-week public consultation process at the end of October to gather input on how BC Ferries can reduce costs. It’s estimated BC Ferries will rack up a $564-million shortfall in the next 10 years and the plan is to cut $26 million by 2016.
The consultation process includes 38 public meetings in 30 communities, a discussion guide, feedback form and a website.
There is one meeting in Powell River and another one on Texada Island. The meeting in Powell River is scheduled from 6 to 9 pm on Monday, November 19 at Town Centre Hotel. Officials are also holding a small group meeting from 1 to 3 pm on the same day in the same location.
The Texada meeting takes place from 6 to 9 pm on Wednesday, December 5 at the Texada Island Community Hall.
Bill Cripps, chair of the Northern Sunshine Coast Ferry Advisory Committee, said the province is trying to solve a problem it created and it has not provided information that would enable people to comment logically about service reductions. “It’s a pretty frustrating situation that we’re about to enter into,” he said. “The provincial government created the problem and they want ferry users in coastal communities to solve it.”
Cripps said it’s important to note that the provincial government is holding the consultation, not BC Ferries. “The reason that our fares are so high is because of provincial public policy with respect to the ferry system,” he said.
When the provincial government adopted the Coastal Ferry Act and created the British Columbia Ferry Corporation in 2003, Judith Reid, then minister of transportation, said the new structure would mean improved service and customer choice, guaranteed service levels and fair rates and enhanced economic development and job creation, with “long-term, modest and predictable average fare increases.”
While fares have increased by as much as 100 per cent on some routes, the provincial government’s contribution to ferry service has not increased since 2003, Cripps pointed out. At the same time, costs have gone up. Higher fares have reduced ridership, which in turn has reduced revenue, in a never-ending downward spiral.
The government has supplied reams of information on each route in terms of how many vehicles are on each sailing, but little else. “The utilization is down because ferry fares are up and ridership is down,” Cripps said. “They’re asking ferry users to make suggestions about how to make service adjustments, but they’re not telling us anything about the cost structure.”
For example, if the first sailing from Saltery Bay to Earls Cove were cancelled, how much money would be saved? No one can say which runs should be cancelled because no one knows how important they are to people who use them, Cripps explained, and what kind of personal and business decisions they’ve made because that service exists.
However, the process is going to happen, Cripps said, and he thinks it’s important that Powell River and Texada residents participate and make their own decisions about how to respond.
Representatives from 13 coastal regional districts and ferry advisory committees had pre-consultation sessions with ministry officials the week before the province announced the public consultation process.
Subsequently, Colin Palmer, chair of Power River Regional District and head of the regional district group, wrote a letter to Mary Polak, minister of transportation and infrastructure, which pointed out the process is flawed. “We advised her that it needed a lot more work before it went public,” Palmer said. “The minister hasn’t responded to me or the chairs.”
Palmer said he’s tempted to suggest that there should be a public meeting after the consultation in Powell River. Local leaders could talk about what the survey really means, so residents can make informed answers, “rather than trying to answer questions that they really don’t understand because no one has given them enough information.”
For example, the survey includes questions about passenger-only services, cable ferries, bridges or increases to property taxes and fuel taxes to fund the ferry service. “There’s only one place they can put a cable ferry and that’s Denman Island,” Palmer said. “The only other thing is that if people want a bridge, then they’re going to have to pay for it, individually, each community.”
Palmer added that he wasn’t going to fill out the survey until after the meetings in Powell River.
Scott Randolph, Powell River Regional Economic Development Society manager, said the process is fundamentally flawed. “It’s a rushed process which has no other goal but political expediency,” he said.
All the materials are designed to manipulate the process, Randolph pointed out. “There’s no other result other than directing the conversation in the direction they want it to go,” he said. “The approach they’ve taken to this overall is wrong. They are basically concocting a band-aid solution. It does not address any of the fundamental issues of the system.”
The only way to solve the issues is to take the system down to its foundations, Randolph said. Communities, BC Ferries and government need to sit down and work out solutions that are going to benefit all three parties, he added. “Looking at cutting one run or another is not going to solve anything,” he said. “We’re going to have to take a look at the service and decide how do we design a system that works for everybody.”
New Democrat MLA Nicholas Simons, who represents Powell River-Sunshine Coast, questioned why the process was province-wide. “Nobody is asking us about any of the infrastructure in any other region,” he said. “We’re the only region in the province that has to ask permission or get input from other regions on how our economies will survive, how our families will stay where they live.”
Residents in other parts of the province don’t necessarily know how dependent coastal communities are on ferries, Simons added. “They see the 14 interior ferries, that mostly have alternative road routes, that are free. Nobody is asking us about that.”
The ferry commissioner has said that fares have reached a tipping point, Simons said. “Your choice is going to be essentially choking the communities’ economy. It’s like squeezing the hand a little tighter. Obviously, we need to have a discussion, but the discussion should be fair, it should be open and it shouldn’t be government trying to download the decisions on a third party.”
Simons also looked at what has happened to ferry service since 2003. “I ask anybody if they think things are better,” he said. “Unless you are addicted to Triple O sauce and you go from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay, that’s the only way you can tell me that the ferries are better.”
