Return BC Ferries to the crown – Reader
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, December 17, 2025
This was originally sent as an open letter to Mid Island-Pacific Rim MLA Josie Osborne.
Dear MLA Osborne:
This follows up your November 12 email claiming that because B.C. Ferries was created as a corporation following the 1999 Fast Ferries scandal, that an audit of the government’s oversight failure cannot again be conducted. I am not alone in arguing that B.C. Ferries is not an “independent” corporation, but one totally dependent on ever-increasing, massive government subsidies to stay afloat. By operating in the red, deploying failing vessels needing millions in avoidable repairs, and projecting a 30% fare increase by 2028, B.C. Ferries will likely pass the $1B loan debt for Chinese-built vessels onto taxpayers and continue to drain the public purse with impunity.
The facts are grim: B.C. Ferries wasted $1B of taxpayer money in the 1990s. The 2001 Wright Review attributed this waste to a “baroque” oversight system in which no one was responsible, and accounted for the corporation’s incompetence. Regrettably, that same ineffective oversight system remains intact today.
Instead of correcting the failures of his predecessor—who was replaced due to incompetence—the current leadership is free to perpetuate them. The failed Baynes Sound cable ferry experiment, which has the highest breakdown rate in the fleet, remains in profoundly unreliable service due to “budget reasons.” (Due to an un-resolvable design failure, it is currently replaced by the MV Quinitsa.) The new island electric hybrids provide such unreliable service that they are being replaced or rerouted. This pattern of deploying unreliable vessels raises a critical question: Given the corporation’s history, what assurance is there that the Chinese vessels will not also fail? Premier Eby’s announcement that he will not intervene in the Chinese vessel purchase signals that the corporation will likely pass the $1B debt onto taxpayers and continue to drain the public purse with impunity. This is an untenable impasse.
I am, therefore, appealing to you on behalf of Denman and Hornby islanders to call for reintroducing tabled Bill 7 that provides the government with oversight power by amending the Coastal Ferry Act, and to call for considering the creation of a fully independent and accountable board, as recommended in the Wright Review. The Canadian Federation of Taxpayers demands that B.C. Ferries get off the “gravy boat”; the Conservatives and Greens call for returning the corporation to the Crown. The NDP, however, remains oblivious to the cost of keeping the status quo, both to ferry-dependent communities and to taxpayers. The hundreds of millions, and perhaps billions saved could be allocated to mitigating current crises in health care, affordable housing, and education, or to purchasing new vessels.
Respectfully,
Sharon Small,
Denman Island.
