Dear Editor:
Years ago when W.A.C. Bennett became premier of B.C., there were two private ferry systems operating just two profitable routes: the Black Ball Ferry and the CPR Ferry.
They refused to operate ferries to the Gulf Islands and so Premier Bennett started the B.C. Ferry system, providing service to most of the Gulf Islands.His motto was to unite all B.C. residents via an affordable and reliable transportation system.
They called it Bennett's Navy.
It led to settlement of many of the Gulf Islands.The service was expanded to many previously unserviced islands. They were water roads and vital to the communities.Successive governments failed to recognize this as a service to the people.
They played with the concept and failed to honour the intent to be of service to residents.
They started building larger and more luxurious ships.Then they started outsourcing the construction.They loaded the ferry corporation with billions of dollars of unnecessary debt and they were forced to raise prices to cover their stupidity.When they did that, they priced the cost of travel outside the reach of the non-government employee.Ridership fell. They knew it would because it reached critical economic value.Reduced ridership made the vessels too large for the service and too costly to maintain. To remedy the loss, the B.C. Ferries decided to. .. (wait for it). .. raise the rates again. Simultaneously it also decided to reduce ferry service on "unprofitable island routes."
The present government intends to dismantle the ferry system so that it verts back to the two or three routes that were profitable before W.A.C. Bennett reformed the system.B.C. Ferries has a complicit partner in crime. It falls back to Transport Canada, the federal department responsible for all the excess employees on board the vessels.
In the Washington State system a 200-foot ferry requires 17 employees, known as the crew. In B.C. that figure balloons to 48.Logic dictates that if a crew of 17 can successfully crew a ferry for 70 years without incident, that it should be emulated.
The B.C. Ferry Corporation and Transport Canada consortium are the partnership which resulted in a ship on the bottom of the sea. Washington State Ferries has no such failures.We need a new W.A.C. Bennett. Now.
Leo Vanderbyl
North Vancouver
