British Columbia can鈥檛 afford many more cost-saving measures from sa国际传媒 Ferries. In seeking to establish a better bottom line, the corporation has reduced services on money-losing routes and has raised fares substantially. While those measures might seem like good accounting, that鈥檚 a myopic strategy that threatens jobs and businesses among sa国际传媒鈥檚 island and coastal communities.
Last November, the Transportation Ministry announced cuts to Route 40, the Port Hardy-to-Bella Coola ferry service, as well as the decommissioning of the 115-vehicle MV Queen of Chilliwack, an essential link in the province鈥檚 highly touted Discovery Coast Circle Tour. The larger vessel was replaced by the 16-vehicle MV Nimpkish and the open-ocean MV Northern Expedition to create a connector route.
When the changes were announced, business owners, tourism officials and municipal leaders predicted the cuts would be harmful. A report released this week has borne that out, calculating that tourism revenues in the mid-coast and Chilcotin regions have dropped by $3.9 million since the cuts, and governments have lost nearly $1 million in tax revenues.
The report was prepared by Larose Research & Strategy for the Cariboo Regional District, the Northern Development Initiative Trust, Community Futures sa国际传媒, the West Chilcotin Tourism Association and other local entities. It says that same-day ridership between Port Hardy and Bella Coola has dropped 46 per cent and 37 tourism jobs have been lost.
A Larose report released in September estimated that skyrocketing ferry fares over the past decade have cost the province $2.3 billion in economic activity. That report was prepared by for the Union of British Columbia Municipalities and the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities.
Transportation Minister Todd Stone dismissed the latest report.
鈥淭his report, much like the same report that this same author did for the UBCM, is riddled with all kinds of gross simplistic assumptions, and overstates in a number of ways the impacts of the change,鈥� Stone told CKNW radio. He said Route 40 was losing $7 million a year before the service was changed.
Indeed, reports to the sa国际传媒 Ferry Commission do show the route with a $7.35 million loss in 2013, but that was a year with extraordinary refit costs. Also, that was the loss before provincial and federal contributions, which reduced the net loss to $1.7 million. In 2012, the route鈥檚 net loss after contributions was $719,000. The same chart shows a loss of $3.48 million for 2014 before contributions, and a profit of $2.3 million after provincial and federal contributions.
This shouldn鈥檛 be a battle of bookkeeping, a competition of calculations. The studies done by local governments, the UBCM, tourism groups and other organizations should have been done by the government before the fact. The impacts of the cuts and higher fares could have been worked out ahead of time. There鈥檚 so much more to the operation of the ferry system than profit-and-loss statements.
These are poster-child cuts that seem designed to boost the government鈥檚 budget-cutting brand. But the focus is too narrow, overlooking how important the ferry service is to so many communities, and how higher fares and reduced services harm businesses and erase jobs.
Before taking high-profile cost-cutting measures, the government should look first to concrete measures, such as removing costly layers of bureaucracy from sa国际传媒 Ferries. The argument that an allegedly independent corporation requires that much management is negated by the fact that the shots are being called by the government. No one is fooled.
It costs a lot to provide ferry service, but if the system can鈥檛 perform its intended services, the costs will be even higher.
