Required reading 101: Government Dithering

The Vancouver Sun’s Vaughn Palmer adds to the discussion on the Queen of the North disaster off of Gill Island and the state of the BC ferry corporation due to political maneuvering. Required reading for all on the North coast and through the province!


GOVERNMENT DITHERING DELAYED NEW FERRIES
By Vaughn Palmer
Vancouver Sun columnist
Thursday, March23, 2006
Page A3

The B. C. Government has known for a long time that the antiquated northern ferry fleet needed replacing.

The oldest of the vessels, the Queen of Prince Rupert, was slated for the scrap heap as far back as June 1994.

The QPR was then 28 years old and increasingly expensive to maintain. A scheduled refit was put on hold because it was cheaper and smarter to build a new ship.

A new state-of-the-art replacement would be in service no later than mid-1997, Promise.

A companion vessel, the then 25 year old Queen of the North, was to remain in service. But its days were numbered as well.

The single-compartment hull made the ship more vulnerable to taking on the water than the multiple compartment structure then emerging as the industry standard.

If safety standards changed, it too would have to be replaced, sooner rather than later.

The premier who presided over the so-called “northern strategy” for the ferry fleet: Mike Harcourt. The Minister for ferries at the time: Glen Clark.

Readers wondering what ever happened to their northern fleet strategy would need only note that on the same day Harcourt and Clark also committed the government to building three aluminum-hulled catamaran ferries.

The New Democratic Party’s northern ferry strategy, like that NDP government itself, was a casualty of the fast ferry project.

Enter the B. C. Liberals with their own designs on how to improve the ferry service.

Though upgrading the fleet was a prime goal when they took office five years ago, they can hardly claim to have moved with all deliberate speed.

Not until 2003 did the Liberals ask the reorganized BC Ferries to being developing a replacement plan for a northern fleet that was well along the age continuum from antiquated to senile.

The “northern strategy,” the Liberals called it, and you wonder if that was a coincidence or somebody found an old policy paper in a desk drawer.

Development would consume another three years. More planning, More consultations. Plus the Liberals insisted that this be an exercise in “alternative service delivery,” meaning time was spent exploring whether a private operator was interested in providing the northern services.

As time marched on, the ferry corporation didn’t dare ignore the increasingly decrepit state of the vessels. In 2004, it spent $10 million on the refit of the Queen of Prince Rupert that was said to be a waste of money a decade earlier.

Safety standards did change. Transport Canada decided the time for single-compartment hulls was past. The QPR and Queen of the North were given an extended lease on life on the expectation that they would be replaced.

But time was running out. In an interview with the Vancouver Sun this year, BC Ferries chief David Hahn said the need for new ships was urgent.

“It’s important to do. It’s a big deal. They probably should have been done 10 years ago.”

He said the single-compartment design meant that if the hulls were breached as a result of a grounding, they could fill entirely with water.

Which may well be what actually happened to the Queen of the North early Wednesday morning, though one ought to wait for the investigators’ reports before saying so.

Hahn’s comments, coming only last month, hinted at the corporation’s frustration over the time it was taking the B. C. Liberals to make up their mind on the northern strategy.

Finally the paperwork was put on the March agenda for treasury board, the cabinet’s budget-making committee.

There was a brief postponement while the committee chair, Finance Minister Carole Taylor, fielded her budget estimates in the house.

So the Northern strategy was pushed ahead to the treasury board meeting on the morning of March 22, by which time one of the vessels in need of replacing had been sitting on the bottom of the Inside Passage for several hours.

“Ironic.” Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon called it. Those given to a darker sense o humour noted that overnight developments had at least ruled out the option of going for another refit.

After what one presumes was a well-focused discussion on Wednesday morning, treasury board green lighted the subsidy need to underwrite the construction and operation of three new vessels for the northern run.

Nobody was saying how much, I’d guess an annual operating subsidy in the $50 to $60 million range and construction costs exceeding $350 million in total.

But even if the plan proceeds with all deliberate speed – and they still have to sort out whether BC Ferries or the alternative service provider gets the nod – construction won’t begin for some time.

Falcon said the soonest they could get something built and into service on the northern runs is 2009, a decade and a half after the first replacement was promised.

No names yet, but the Queen of Unconscionable Delays ought to make the short list.

Email-vapalmer@direct.ca