Chances are good that Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Todd Stone won’t forget his visit to the Sunshine Coast any time soon. We hope he came with good intentions, but quite honestly, we’ve heard it all before.
His toeing the company line with the same old platitudes didn’t endear him to anyone in the 60-plus crowd protesting outside the Driftwood Inn in Sechelt. How many times on the Sunshine Coast have we heard, ‘there’s nothing we can do’ from the B.C. government?
“We can’t assume the $1.25 billion debt that the ferries has on the government books,” goes loudest whine. “Why not?” we wonder. Did they make the books look falsely favourable when they unloaded the ferries into a Crown corporation in the first place? Is it not reasonable to think that one should cancel out the other? This puts us in mind of the old shell game — play back and forth with the same bucks often enough and pretty soon everyone will be so confused we’ll be happy to take anything at face value.
Stone’s been on record in the past few weeks ripping into a report that puts at $2 billion the loss in revenue to the province from zooming ferry fares. He called the report commissioned by the Union of B.C. Municipalities “irresponsible.” But if the report is correct, and we have no reason to think it’s not, the government would have been $75 million ahead if they’d have left the fares alone and kept the ferries on the government’s books.
Now we fear, along with every other ferry-dependent community on the West Coast, that we will never be able to get our tourists or the young people who can’t afford to commute back to our struggling areas.
It’s particularly galling when communities in the Interior of B.C. who have access to a fully operational highway get to ride ferries for free — and not only that, they got a new one this year.
It’s also interesting to note that our transportation minister said at the Chamber meeting on Sept. 30 that he never considered the possibility of a highway to connect us to the mainland. Our reaction to that bit of news emulates Homer Simpson slapping the side of his head and interjecting “d’oh.”
We’re not fools, Minister Stone, so we would ask that you stop treating us as if we are. Don’t tell us we’ll be listened to, when history tells a radically different story. We know when we’re up that creek.
