Deer Islanders want answers about ferry's fate
Published Monday July 6th, 2009
Transportation MLA Rick Doucet trying to find ways to cut $300,000 per year to keep boats running as they do now
DEER ISLAND - Rick Doucet could tell you how a fisherman feels caught on a bad tide between, say, Pendleton Island and Butlers Point.
As Fisheries minister, he must support cost-cutting measures in the budget that then finance minister Victor Boudreau tabled in the Legislative Assembly in the spring.
As MLA for Charlotte-The Isles, a groundswell from 750 constituents on Deer Island could drown him at the polls if Transportation Minister Denis Landry carries out his plan to reduce ferry service to the mainland by half in the winter months.
Doucet hopes to navigate safely home through these shoals by finding $300,000 per year to cut from the cost of the Deer Island ferry service but still keep both boats running and not charge fares.
He and the West Isles local service district advisory committee plan to find that $300,000 in far less than the six months they have left, Doucet said in an interview Friday.
Deer Island residents wish the minister would come and tell them at a public meeting how he will do this.
There will be a public meeting before long, Joyce Stuart, chairwoman of the local service district advisory committee, said in an interview Friday.
Right now, however, Deer Islanders seem to feel like navigators caught in a fog waiting to run aground.
"That's a human life there that's at stake for $300,000," John Calder said, standing in front of the Welch Store at Fairhaven.
The extra time ambulances would wait with hourly ferry service worries him. "They're playing with people's lives and they're playing with people's livelihoods, and they should be kicked out of office for doing it."
"These ferries are our lifeline to this island," Galen Calder said. "We've got no alternate link to get onto the mainland."
"I have a son who's in a wheelchair and I just need to know that the ferry is there when I need to go. We can't wait an hour," said Tina Dempsey, whose 17-year-old son suffers from spina bifida. He has medical appointments in St. Stephen, Saint John or Halifax about once a month.
Someone will die taking a skiff to get to work, or to attend an after-hours activity at Fundy High School in St. George, Katherine Landry said.
"Someone is going to die this winter."
Besides the young people going to high school in St. George, many people commute from the island to work every day - and others commute to jobs on Deer Island.
People from the mainland work on Deer Island at fish, lobster and rockweed operations, aquaculture companies, digging clams and other enterprises, the group at the store said.
Stuart did not know which direction gets the heaviest commuter traffic - onto or off of the island. "I couldn't tell you that. It's going both ways," she said at supper time Friday.
"We'd just like to get a straight answer from our MLA," fisherman Jeff Calder said shortly before noon at the Welch Store. "The government is pushing self-sufficiency but their idea of self-sufficiency is us coming up with $300,000 so we can maintain our own ferry service, which is part of our highway system."
"Their self-sufficiency agenda is to get us off the island," Richard Landry said.
"And we're not ready to leave," Jeff Calder said.
"They want everybody to live in a city - rural areas are in trouble," Wayne Martin said. "Taking one ferry off in the winter is just like telling the people between Saint John and Moncton we're going to close up one of the lanes down your four-lane highway."
Martin, who owns the Welch Store, gathered about two dozen of his neighbours to talk to a reporter from the mainland Friday. They offered suggestions to save money, including not paying crew to sit on the boat when it does not run, also running the boats slightly slower to save fuel.
Some suggested a bridge from L'Etete on the mainland to Butlers Point on Deer Island. Others suggested a partial causeway to Pendleton Island and MacMasters Island, leaving a much shorter ferry run.
Their bottom line in the dispute at hand includes two government-run ferries providing half-hourly service from Deer Island to L'Etete with no fares.
The government will meet all of these conditions except, possibly, who runs the service, Doucet said.
"I know that we can find the $300,000," he said. Further, "Fares have never been discussed."
However, the government will follow through on its plan to request proposals for private operators for the Deer Island, Grand Manan and White Head Island ferry services as set out in the Fundy Islands Ferry Services Project available on the Transportation Department's website.
The province intends to build a new 24-car ferry to replace the 18-car John E. Rigby for the Deer Island run. The Deer Island Princess II would continue to run.
Coastal Transport Ltd.'s contract with the province to operate the Grand Manan and White Head Island ferries expires in May.
This fall the Transportation Department will issue a request for proposals to operate the ferries to the Fundy islands including Deer Island, department spokesman Andrew Holland said Thursday.
Meanwhile the department will design and tender a contract to build new ferries for Deer Island and White Head Island. Eastern Shipbuilding Group of Panama City, Fla., already has a US$65-million contract to build an 82-car ferry to run from Blacks Harbour to Grand Manan.
The government plans to put the new Deer Island ferry into service in 2012, according to the Transportation Department's website.
A private company might run the ferries but the government will set the rules: two ferries to Deer Island year round, half-hourly service, no fares, Doucet said Friday.
The $300,000 from the Deer Island ferry service will contribute toward $8 million that Transportation must save under the provincial budget.
The costs of running ferries to Deer Island increased to $2.9 million in 2008-2009, up by $500,000 from $2.5 million in the previous fiscal year, Doucet said. Cutting $300,000 would mean running the service for $2.6 million per year.
"As far as some of the people are concerned, the way it's being operated right now is inefficient," he said. "There's been a lot of total frustration - total frustration - with the operation of that ferry over a number of years."
"We're going to use this opportunity as a springboard to fix it for the long term, and fix it is such a way that we minimize the impact on scheduling," he said.
"I feel that we're going to have it in place," he said. "I see a very good outcome on it."
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