Ferry future needs feds

Federal officials listened intently June 28 as speaker after speaker argued that ferry service between Digby and Saint John is infrastructure essential to the future of southwestern Nova Scotia.

In a two-and-a-half hour public session in the Digby Fire Hall, many of the speakers suggested that Ottawa has to provide financial assistance, perhaps through a partnership with the ferry operator. “This ferry used to be a service, not a business,” charged Jimmy MacAlpine, deputy warden of the Municipality of Digby. “I treat it no differently than the Trans-Canada Highway. The federal government has to play a big role in keeping this as a service.” “It’s a lifeline,” added Linda Brown, owner of cottages in Hampton.

The federal officials are part of a working group exploring options for the Bay of Fundy ferry service in what they describe as “the context of regional transportation requirements.”

Earlier in the week, the group held two daylong meetings with municipal officials and industry interests who also see the ferry link as vital infrastructure in the region’s economy and future. The meetings were closed to the public, but officials did comment afterwards.

The public meeting June 28 in the Digby fire hall almost directly coincided with Bay Ferries announcement on June 30, 2006, that it planned to discontinue the Bay of Fundy service as of Oct. 31.

The announcement led to protests and an eventual deal between the ferry company and federal and provincial governments that will see the service continue until Jan. 31, 2009.

The working group was set up with officials from Transport Canada and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency to develop an action plan action plan to put before federal cabinet ministers later this year.

Among the first to address Thursdays meeting was Digby businessman Dean Kenley suggested that business people in the region are survivors, “but in the long term, they can’t survive if the infrastructure collapses.”

Kenley said he had to skip his daughter’s graduation ceremony, which coincided with the public consultation, to stress the importance of the ferry to the region. “Transport Canada has to realize rural Nova Scotia is just as important as Toronto or Montreal, or ferry service in B.C.,” said Kenley, and he urged the working group to reach out to the world to find a ferry operator willing to continue the service, and perhaps bring new ideas for its survival. “If Bay Ferries is not willing, perhaps someone else is.”

The federal panel’s Sauvé said it will ask next month for expressions of interest from companies willing to operate the ferry service, but the request may be limited to Canada. Liberal MP Robert Thibault suggested that Transport Canada has the will to see the service continue, and ACOA has the money. “I would prefer to see (the service) financed by the federal government.”

Bay Ferries problems are in part self-inflicted by high prices and poor scheduling, suggested Mike Gushue, executive director of the recently formed Annapolis Digby Economic Development Agency (ADEDA).

Gushue, a former official with Marine Atlantic, said that federal ferry-operating agency was most successful in marketing its service “when it found who our customer was, and what was their price point.”

In the past three years, according to information supplied by an ADEDA consultant, the fares for commercial traffic climbed six per cent, but rose 60 per cent for two adults in a car.

Patty Smith, a representative of the Coastal Inn-Kingfisher, said about 40 per cent of the motel’s business is related directly to the ferry’s existence, but she hears frequent complaints about fares on the Princess of Acadia. The couple in the MG could easily have driven around more cheaply than the $260 spent on the ferry, she said.

Working group-co-chair Claudine Sauvé, director of ferry policy with Transport Canada, noted that fare prices have been seen as a main challenge to the ferry service, as well as schedule conflicts between commercial and tourism traffic.

A survey report on the 36-year-old ferry is due within weeks, and inspections of terminal facilities in Saint John and Digby show each requires about $5 million in repairs.