An energetic BC prime minister, David Eby, pointed to the federal government on Thursday about what he says is the unfair treatment of BC Ferry passengers before accusing the aggressive impulse of the Alberta Danielle Smith pipeline to threaten the viability of other projects in his province.
Eby made the comments at Ottawa after dinner with Prime Minister Mark Carney on Wednesday night. He will also meet with key cabinet ministers during his visit to the capital.
“Obviously, I am disappointed that there has not been a greater emphasis on the incredibly unfortunate treatment of Ferry users in British Columbia compared to Ferry users in eastern Canada,” Eby said.
The prime minister said that Steven Mackinnon told the Minister of Transportation that it was annoying that the federal government is paying to build ferries for the Atlantic of Canada, but that only offers BC a loan of low interest for the same purpose.
The British Columbia Prime Minister David Eby says that he is “disappointed” with the federal government treatment to Ferry users in BC after a meeting with Transport Minister Steven Mackinnon in Ottawa on Thursday. Eby claimed that the east coast of Canada has received a preferential treatment in Ferry’s acquisition, saying that more subsidies are assigned to the east than west.
“BC Ferries uses obtain $ 1 on average in federal subsidy, while Eastern Ferry users get $ 300 in federal subsidies,” he said. “That disparity and that injustice must be addressed.”
The Federal Government supports Ferry service in East Canada by financing Marine Atlantic, a Crown Corporation that runs Ferries between Newfoundland and Labrador and Nueva Scotia.
And the Canada Ferry Transport Services Contribution Program supports the ferries that work between Digby, NS and Saint John, as well as the PEI Ferries that attend Caribou, NS and the Magdalen Islands of Quebec.
The Federal Government has the Ferries and Terminals of PEI and New Brunswick and pays their repairs, but rent them to private companies instead of operating them.
In the federal budget of 2019, the Liberal Government announced that “would acquire two ferry” to replace the ships that serve Quebec and Nueva Scotia and buy a provisional replacement ferry for the New Scotland route until they were expected to be delivered in 2028 and 2029.
In 2023, the Liberal Government signed a $ 38.6 million contract to buy the Fanafjord MV replacement ferry. The new ferries built by the Davie shipyard in Quebec are still in the design phase.
When BC Ferries, an old provincial Crown Corporation that is now an independent public property company, needed four new ferries, the Federal Government lent the company $ 1 billion instead of buying them and lease them.
After the loan was approved, a Chinese state shipyard was hired to build ships, obtaining criticism from both liberals and conservatives.
The parliamentarians in the transport committee voted on Thursday to call former transport minister Chrystia Freeland to give evidence that shows what he knew about the decision to get a Chinese shipyard with money from a federal loan.
Eby defended the decision when it was made public, saying that BC Ferries went through a five -year acquisition process and that the ships were “desperately necessary.”
Ferry financing differences
A key difference between Ferry operations on the west coast and the east coast is that in BC the service is a provincial concern that connects points within a province, while the transfers in the East connect five provinces with each other and in the Canada continent.
According to the terms of 1949 of the Union, which established conditions for Newfoundland that joined Canada, it was agreed that the federal government would maintain a burden and a passenger link between North Sydney, NS and Port Aux Basque, NL
When Pei joined Canada in 1873, one of the conditions of that agreement was that the government would provide and pay a link between the island and the continent.
This commitment was fulfilled with the use of ferries until the Confederation bridge through the Northumberland Strait entered into use and the Constitution was modified to say that a fixed crossing could be replaced.
The Prime Minister of British Columbia, David Eby, said that the project is “non -existent, except in political discourse”, when journalists asked him if the prohibition of the oil tankers of the west coast must be reversed with the impulse to send decarbonized oil through the northwest coast of the province. Eby was talking from Parliament Hill after meetings with Transportation Minister Steven Mackinnon.
Eby also warned that Smith’s impulse to ensure that the federal government supports his dream of a pipe of Alberta’s oil faces to the north coast of the. C. is premature and risky.
“I will say this for Prime Minister Smith,” Eby said. “She is an incredible defender, because she would never guess that there is no private proponent, there is no money, there is no project, there is no support from the first nations along the coast. In fact, no one has talked to them.”
Eby said the project only exists “in political discourse.”
He said he was concerned about the projects that value tens of billions of dollars in his province that “can be endangered” by losing the support of the first nations due to Smith’s impulse for a new pipe.
