Dollar figure on ferry loss

Out of sight, out of mind. The Digby to Saint John ferry hasn’t been much in the public eye since federal and provincial governments dredged up funding to keep Bay Ferries operating the service until January, 2009.

That’s just over 14 months from now.

Even on an emergency basis last year—with local politicians, businesses and residents clamoring for action—it still took four months before a deal was made to temporarily save the ferry.

Since then, a committee of civil servants has been drafting recommendations for the appropriate government ministers, but that report is still some months away.

You can count on the report sitting on a desk for sometime, collecting dust and the occasional puzzled glance before any action is taken.

(At that, it may still beat any government commitment to Digby’s wharf, but that’s another story.)

This week, the area got a better look at the possible effects if the ferry service—almost a century and a quarter old—is abandoned.

The Digby to Saint John Ferry Impact Study forecasts a future in which the southwestern end of the province becomes a backwater that misses out on future growth in industry and tourism.

The consulting firm that provided the study put a price tag on the region’s annual loss of as much as $40,000,000.

The loss could even be more, especially since currently successful industries—especially our fresh seafood industry—would likely have to change to the less remunerative frozen food business. Fewer dollars for processors means fewer dollars for fishermen and their families, and even more impetus for young people to leave the region.

The Bay of Fundy Transportation Coalition, a group of municipal politicians, regional businesses organizations and residents, commissioned the new impact study.

The coalition members weren’t invited to join Ottawa’s working group of civil servants, although they are certainly more concerned about this area’s future.

We hope the federal committee, which now has a copy of the impact study, will spare it more than a passing glance, and do better than its simple “thank you” to the coalition that commissioned the study.

What this region requires is an answer on the ferry’s future long before the deadline of January, 2009. According to the impact study, we already have had businesses cancel plans to move or expand here, including a resort development on Digby Neck.

The last thing we need in this area is to lose the ferry service. Government should consider the inter-provincial service as a ‘highway’, the equivalent perhaps of the Cobequid Pass.

The second-last thing we need is to drag out the uncertainty and Ottawa—particularly Transport Canada and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency—should make a public commitment to maintaining the ferry service, without waiting for the kind of last-minute crisis endured here last year.