Our ferry, Queen of Capilano, sailing in Snug Cove back in 2009 before she had her capacity increased.
Got word today that BC Ferries is embarking on an initiative to renew their community engagement practices. This is important to me because I rely on BC Ferries to get to and from my home on Bowen Island to te mainland. They are a critical player in coastal life in British Columbia. in 2003 the government of BC, a liberal party who favoured privatization, turned them from a Crown Corporation (and operating entity owned by government to serve the public good) to a private corporation. Or at least a quasi-private corporation; the province owns the only share. This was largely done to get BC Ferries capital debt off the government’s books so they could show that they were combatting public debt. It was a bait a switch game, but it has not improved services for Islanders in BC. It has become less accessible for Islanders to voice concerns and propose solutions because its the services contract that guides operations (the Province has a fixed price services contract with the company) and not actually public needs. This is what happens when you privatize public services. You get enshittification because the company needs to shift its focus from public service to operational sustainability, and in the cases of purely commercial organizations, profit and return to shareholders
BC Ferries used to have Ferry Advisory Committees in the communities where they operate, and these FACs, as they were known, were important channels for communications between islanders and the company. Increasingly it seems like these haven’t been very effective, as FACs can’t really influence capital construction, and at least on our island, BC Ferries has been completely unwilling to work with us on issues like ferry marshalling, traffic management and service improvements.
Now they are reinventing their process and have started an engagement process to do so. I breathed a big dispirited sigh when I saw that they are calling the first phase “best practice research.” There are no “best practices” for how to deal with the kinds of issues BC Ferries is facing either as a company or in its interaction with our island. We are in literally unprecedented times.
The advise I will be giving to BC Ferries will be that they need to adopt a approach to working with Bowen Island, and other island communities, that seeks to develop experiments and small changes that can help us learn more about how to make things better. We have many challenges and Islanders have a lot of ideas with respect to traffic management, marshalling, services schedules, equipment, collection of fees and infrastructure development, especially as they get closer to the scheduled Snug Cove Terminal capital project. Now is the time for us to experiment and find what works. I would also advise them to work with a group of citizens on Bowen who can act as a kind of ongoing citizens assembly – studying the problems together, learning about constraints, and co-creating ideas which BC Ferries can help implement. What is required for that is for BC Ferries to trust Islanders and to be a part of the solution by offering time, money and influence resources to see what we can discover by putting some ideas into play. I’ve signed up to receive their communications. I’m not too confident they will adopt the kinds of approaches I’m talking about, but I’ll let them know.
