Skip to content

Not a good analogy, Mr. Keighley

Editor: BC Ferries recently announced a contract for three new intermediate class ferries. The contract was let following an international competitive bid open to all suitable shipbuilders in Canada and abroad.

Editor:

BC Ferries recently announced a contract for three new intermediate class ferries. The contract was let following an international competitive bid open to all suitable shipbuilders in Canada and abroad. That the Polish shipbuilder Remontowa won the contract speaks to the quality of their product and their proposal.

Seaspan Marine of North Vancouver, the only Canadian bidder, abandoned their bid due to commitments to navy and Coast Guard contracts. The fixed price, fixed schedule contract terms will save BC Ferries and taxpayers money and reduce the risks associated with such a complex purchase.

The suggestion by Mr. Keighley (Coast Reporter letters, July 11) that BC Ferries or the B.C. government should have put together a consortium and directed the work to that group would have been a formula for disaster. All risk would have accrued to the government in terms of quality, price and schedule. The potential component companies of any such consortium had a full opportunity to make those arrangements on their own and bid for the contract. They chose not to do so; presumably that was a business decision based on market factors.

The notion that the government would then distort the market so badly as to overcome their reluctance speaks to the folly of the idea.

The Spirit Class ferries are not a good analogy to Mr. Keighley’s proposal. The consortium that built those vessels was arranged by industry, not the government, and they won the bid competitively. A more relevant example would be the Fast Ferries fiasco of the late 1990s. It was a government directed, non-competitive contract that wasted almost a billion dollars and never achieved operational status; the ferries were eventually sold for scrap.

BC Ferries and the government learned its lesson from that disaster and we don’t have to relearn it every 15 years.

Keith Maxwell, Sechelt