A town hall meeting was hosted by BC Ferries Service on Thursday Nov 13th at the Community Centre. The attendance was not great due to very poor advertising. I notified the public through my report in the previous issue of the DI and the chair of the Ferry Advisory Committee also notified people of the meeting though his report in the DI, but there was no ad placed in our local media by BC Ferries! The only mention was in the "Community Calendar" in the DI which went unnoticed by most. There were still about 45 people there, but not the 450 that might have been there with better advertising.

[Editor's note: The event was also publicized in the gumboot's Frontpage, in the sections News from Area C, and in Ferry Tales, as well as in the Calendar.]

Having said all of that, the meeting was fairly emotional and heated due to the way that our ferry dependent community has been treated since the corporation was semi-privatized by the current government in 2003. Having been involved in the Ferry Advisory Committee process since it's inception, I have come to know that our true adversary regarding our ferry service is the current government, not BC Ferries bureaucrats.

It was abundantly clear to me and I think to most in the audience that we are wasting our time talking to the bureaucracy. Until we can get up our energies and gather together to confront the real culprit in this very important issue, we are just wasting our time. Sure, I will continue to work with BC Ferries to insure that they don't make any changes that are within their power to make that will effect us negatively, but for the real issues of how much the ferry fares are breaking up our community and holding us hostage on our own island, we need to go to the government. This government (and I don't care what their party is... it could be any party) has done its level best to ruin our public systems in a few short years: public marine transport, public power generation, public power transmission, public rail and the list will grow. These institutions were put in by a free enterprise government (Social Credit) that seemed to have a view of the bigger picture. We have all been the beneficiaries of those projects of years gone by. Now we are watching all of those institutions taken out of public hands and privatized. This has got to stop. Our marine highway's fate should be the last straw for all of us in ferry dependent communities. If we don't do something and do it soon, none of us will be able to afford to live here. Don't be fooled by the claw back of a portion of the fuel surcharge; don't be fooled by the fare reduction in December and January; don't be fooled by the restoration of the eliminated runs on the Sunshine Coast ferries. These actions were taken by government due to the groundswell of protest that started to emerge when the services were cut to the Sunshine Coast on top of outrageous increases in fares. People had had enough. The Premier stepped in and took over from the Minister. The Minister's inattention to the actions of BC Ferries was starting to cause the government too much damage... a few short months before a provincial election. So the Premier took over, promised a small bit of relief, reversed some decisions and hoped that everyone would forget the pain and suffering prior to the election next May. Please keep in mind that there will be two scheduled increases to our fares in 2009 and who knows how many unscheduled increases.

A press release, that just this second arrived by email as I type, talks about a government audit that recommends that students should start paying fares! A report that came to us on Friday at the Ferry Advisory meeting talks about "rationalizing fares" (averaging and consolidating)... there are too many different classes of fares so lets combine some and still keep the same amount of revenue coming in, is the gist of it. That would mean that there will be "winners and losers", in BC Ferries words. And the losers, in some cases would be "big time" in some cases, in their words. And then there was the proposal, under "rationalization" to start charging for bikes! Well the you-know-what hit the fan at that point in the discussion. To penalize people who are trying to make a difference in our world by riding bikes and reducing the number of cars on the ferry is just not on. Two of us made that point quite clear to the BC Ferries staff in attendance. I just received an email from the chair of the committee, John Sprungman, and he advises that they are not likely to have that one ready until after April of next year (funny how that works... no bad news just before the election!). To charge for bikes flies in the face of the Premier's initiatives to try to encourage more use of bikes to reduce our overall carbon footprint. The right hand doesn't seem to know what the left is doing.

So what are we going to do? How much more are we going to take? Suggestions?