If you ask Jeremy Miller what life is like on Bowen Island, his answer is entirely dependent on whether B.C. Ferries is running on schedule.
It’s just a 20-minute ferry ride between the idyllic island in Howe Sound and Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver. But that commute to work or school has become more frustrating than traffic in the Massey Tunnel, with persistent ferry cancellations forcing some to consider moving off the floating suburb.
“This place that we chose for various lifestyle or family reasons is suddenly surprisingly becoming possibly unviable,” said Miller, speaking to Postmedia by phone while travelling by ferry back to Bowen Island with his wife, Kendall, and their nine-month-old daughter, Sloane.
“The ferry really is the lifeblood of our community. But one cannot function without a functional ferry. There’s certainly an undertone of stress about that among residents.”
The latest example was on the Saturday of the May long weekend when B.C. Ferries cancelled 12 sailings between Bowen Island and Horseshoe Bay from 3:30 p.m. onward because of a lack of staff.
Ferry cancellations are rippling across the entire ferry network, impacting major sailings between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay and smaller routes from the gulf islands to the mainland and Vancouver Island.
In total, 1,304 sailings were cancelled between January and May of this year, according to figures provided by B.C. Ferries. Of those, 555 sailings were cancelled because there weren’t enough crew, 266 due to mechanical difficulties, 369 due to weather, and 114 for other reasons.
B.C. Ferries’ new CEO, Nicolas Jimenez, acknowledged those cancellations are frustrating, but he pointed out they represent 1.7 per cent of the 74,105 sailings during that time.
“There’s no secret we’re in a difficult place as a business,” said Jimenez, who took the helm in March after five years leading the Insurance Corporation of B.C. “We’ve done a lot in the last year to really address these critical staffing issues, but these problems won’t go away — certainly not in a week or a month. It’s going to take a while for us to rebuild the resilience that we might have once had a number of years ago in the business.”
While Jimenez could not provide a figure for the number of current staff vacancies, the ferry service has job openings across almost all positions, including engineers, deckhands, terminal staff, food service workers, and cashiers.
B.C. Ferries has to maintain minimum staffing levels on all vessels, so if a deckhand or chief steward calls in sick, that could mean a last-minute cancellation for that vessel.
The ferry service has hired 900 employees since January but its bracing for a wave of retirements — between 450 to 700 marine-certified employees are expected to retire in the next five years, according to B.C. Ferries’ March 2023 filing to its regulator, the B.C. Ferries Commissioner.
It estimates there will be 181 vacancies for marine-certified employees — the trained seafarers who operate vessels — in 2024.
“B.C. Ferries has prioritized the recruitment of licensed officers, but there has been a growing number of declined employment offers,” the ferry service wrote to the commissioner. B.C. Ferries has also seen an increasing number of candidates turning down employment for seasonal and casual employment, depleting the pool of back-fill staff.
One main reason: The wages aren’t high enough.
Wages have not kept pace with inflation and many ferry workers can’t afford to live in the communities in which they work, said Paula White, vice-president of the B.C. Ferry and Marine Workers’ Union, which represents 4,500 ferry workers.
For example, deckhands make $30.70 an hour, which is 25 per cent less than deckhands working for marine transportation company Seaspan.
White said the ferry service’s approach to these problems has been akin to “patching a leaking ship.”
Jimenez acknowledged B.C. Ferries must “address the issue of compensation.” Starting in August, B.C. Ferries and the union will be negotiating mid-contract wage adjustments.
B.C. Ferries is also grappling with a global shortage of marine workers, a problem rippling across ferry services in Washington state and Europe, Jimenez said.
B.C. Ferries is working to recruit licensed mariners from abroad, taking advantage of reciprocal agreements Canada has negotiated with other countries. For example, Jimenez said B.C. Ferries recruited 76 licensed officers from Ukraine since Russia’s invasion of that country.
B.C. Ferries is also looking to modernize its check-in and boarding process at five major terminals, but Jimenez insists this isn’t an effort to pare down the workforce. The company has submitted an application to the B.C. Ferries Commissioner asking for the green light to overhaul the current paper ticket system, which is labour intensive and can be easily bogged down if there aren’t enough staff to collect the tickets.
The goal, Jimenez said, is to create a more efficient movement of people through the terminals to avoid “these big backups that create anxiety and sometimes safety issues.”
White says management should focus on boosting wages, not automation.
“I’m disappointed this is something that they’re choosing to invest in, particularly at this time, considering we don’t have enough crews to make regular sailings happen,” she said. “I think that, in my opinion, is a much higher priority.”
Miller would like Jimenez to come to Bowen Island for a town hall meeting with residents. Bowen Island Mayor Andrew Leonard said he has met with Jimenez to discuss the service disruptions.
“He let us know that the staffing issues would likely continue into the future,” Leonard said.
The May ferry cancellations, for example, left hundreds of tourists stranded on the island as municipal staff scrambled to help them find overnight accommodation and bring water to tourists waiting in the sun for a water taxi back to West Vancouver.
“It’s been particularly challenging, and we do worry about what this portends for a busy summer coming up,” Leonard said. “And then as well as the future for residents who rely on B.C. Ferries as a public transit service to get to work, to get medical appointments, to access amenities on the mainland.”
Leonard said he knows people who have already moved away from the community of 4,200 because of the ferry insecurity.
“It is definitely affecting the livability and the quality of life for residents,” he said.
