The federal budget contained some heavy funding commitments for transit projects on the Lower Mainland, but once again coastal B.C. ferry users were left out of the party.
Wednesday’s federal budget section on “connecting communities by rail and water” promises up to $445.3 million for Marine Atlantic over three years, and $278 million over five years for other ferry services in Atlantic Canada.
By comparison, in its business plan for fiscal 2017, BC Ferries said it was anticipating $29.1 million in federal subsidies through an agreement between the provincial government and Ottawa.
Despite repeated pledges by B.C.’s provincial and federal politicians to make serious waves about the “gross disparity” (MP Pamela Goldsmith-Jones’ words) in federal funding for Atlantic and Pacific ferry systems, the obscene funding gap continues.
In 2014, that gap worked out to $493 per passenger for East Coast ferries compared to $1.41 per passenger for BC Ferries – or 350 times more support for the Atlantic systems. We haven’t seen updated comparisons since then, though we did ask the province last summer and, while they assured us they were all over the issue, they didn’t seem to have any figures on hand to prove they weren’t just blowing smoke.
The double funding standard didn’t show up on NDP Leader John Horgan’s radar either, at least not in his statement Wednesday on the federal budget. “I’m glad to see the Trudeau government stepping up where the Christy Clark government has failed with a firm commitment to transportation and transit infrastructure,” Horgan said.
Urban transit, of course, is as critical a need as coastal ferries, but it should be noted that BC Transit passengers pay 31 per cent of operating costs, TransLink passengers pay 41 per cent and BC Ferries passengers pay 101 per cent.
Whether the comparison is with our Atlantic counterparts or other public transportation users in the province, coastal communities in B.C. have been getting the shaft for too long. Constituents need to keep this issue on the high burner and not be satisfied with glib assurances that mean nothing, as we saw again this week with yet another slap-in-the-face federal budget.
