Much of the good news stems from one event: the half-billion dollar, one-time bail-out the government granted the corporation last year.
The ferry corporation has posted some encouraging news lately, coming out of the devastating impacts of the pandemic. It made significant progress on reducing the number of sailings cancelled due to crew shortages, which reached critical levels last year.
But various financial reports suggest a major permanent hike in the taxpayers’ subsidy to the outfit will be needed to keep the system running at its current levels without major fare hikes. The crew shortage problem peaked in 2023 when 1,163 trips were cancelled on short notice because the company was “unable to find” enough crew members. That was up from 522 the previous year, 109 and 25 in preceding years.
There’s a notable item in the reams of financial data. The annual breakdown of how each route performs financially was submitted this year to the independent B.C. Ferry Commissioner who regulates the outfit. The financial concerns are lurking in the statements even though B.C. Ferries had an outstanding year. It carried more traffic than ever. It completed 91,000 round trips, 11,000 more than its contract with the government requires. It collected $720 million in fares, up five per cent from the previous year.
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