Quote:
Originally Posted by whatnext
Really? That will come as news to the British Columbians who built the entire BC Ferries fleet up to the misguided Campbell years. Of course, in keeping with the typical anti-NDP hysteria, some like to focus solely on the fast ferries.
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The current BC Ferries fleet is 36 ships. That's not an industry.
We have 3 metro lines, does that mean Vancouver has a booming subway building industry? Heck, our trains even come from Korea and Mexico.
It's not an industry when the only buyer is the local government. What if we just didn't need ferries? (many people DID say we didn't need the Coastal ships at all). There are gaps when we don't need ferries built, what happens to government supported companies then (build ferries for no reason?). If the companies can't support themselves on private contracts, then it's not an industry, it's a public sector bureaucracy.
Like I said, the "industry" we do have isn't based on building large ships, it's a refit and repair industry. The province has used them in the past to build ferries, but that's not the reason those companies are supposed to be in business. Their only client isn't supposed to be the provincial government.
Burrard (Burrard-Yarrows) Dry Docks went out of business in the 90's (they built some ferries, both as Burrard and Yarrow, but were never as large as when they built ships during WWII). Blame the NDP?
Victoria Machinery Depot went out of business in 1994. And that is completely the fault of the NDP as many point to it being one of the major successful BC companies that was victim of the business contractions of the 90's under their leadership.
Washington Marine Group (owners of Vancouver Ship Yards) is still going strong, thanks to their many contracts to refit and repair BC ferries, and owns most of the facilities that were owned by the defunct companies. Allied Shipbuilders is still around too. Allied just finished a refit a newly purchased ferry, and Washington Marine Group refit many of the C-class ships (at around $35 million a pop) under the Liberals.
And the Coastal ships ARE NOT the first foreign purchases by BC Ferries.
The ill fated Queen of the North was built in Germany and bought from Sweden in 1974....
BY THE NDP!!!!!!
And many of the old CPR and Blackball ferries that BC Ferries assumed control over were built all over the world.
And why NOT focus on the fast ferries? They were the ONLY ferries the NDP built over 10 years in power.
And they were colossal failures in every way imaginable! The Spirit ships were put in motion by the Socreds, and the NDP completed construction already set in motion, but the Fast Cats were the only ferries conceived and built by the NDP.
They mismanaged ever single aspect of the project. They used public funds to start up a crown corporation (Catamaran Ferries International). This crown corporation's goal was to sell these ferries, at a loss, to create an industry of happy voters.
First they didn't consider the impact or practical application of Highspeed ferries on the coastal routes. They operate in sensitive areas and can't achieve high speed. They had half the capacity of a standard ferry, and took as long to unload and load as the ferries with twice as many cars. These conditions (slow near port, half the capacity) meant that using the fast cats meant BC ferries couldn't transport as many cars across as they used to in a day. They were also fuel inefficient, broke down constantly, and vibrated like a nanny shaking a baby.
Secondly, none of what they did would work anywhere else in the world. The whole point of spending hundreds of millions on setting this project up was to start an industry to sell these things. But they designed ferries that wouldn't work in any other waterway in the world.
The NDP were warned numerous times. First, BC Ferries management wanted to lease a fast ferry and conduct sea trials, to see how fast ferries operated in coastal waters. An Australian company offered their expertize to the project, they warned that first time builders won't be on time because of the materials, warned the engines (we were planning on getting) sucked, and that maintenance costs would be higher than expected. The NDP ignored all suggestions and went straight to building.
Even if there weren't cost overruns, the ships were still poorly designed and unwanted by potential buyers. Even if the targeted cost of $70million per vessel was achieved, we couldn't sell them for half of that. It was a huge waste of money, that many people on the inside warned the NDP about, for an ill conceived plan of setting up an international ferry building company.
It was like that episode of the Simpsons where Homer designs a car. EXACTLY like that. The design was retarded, cost the company more than expected, and nobody wanted one. The 3 things you don't do when running a business.
Say what you will about the design of the Canada line, but on a single day during the Olympics, the Canada Line carried more people than the Fast Cat Fleet combined carried in their operating career.
Sure, the fastferries might not really have cost that much compared to other things we spend money on, but this was one of the few things they had complete control over, from creation to completion, and they mismanaged the hell out of it. It showed that the party had absolutely no leadership or business capabilities.
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If people are really concerned about the NDP being anti-business, they should be rooting for Carole James to stay at the helm. She's been trying to build those bridges, as Blair did in the UK. Why do you think she's getting so much flak from within her own party? She's not the most charismatic person, but then a lot of people have tired of Gordo's used car salesman hucksterism style of leadership (The Best Place on Earth, anyone?)
User fees encourage people to take responsibility for themselves by making them pay for some of the costs of things which results in less abuse of the system and it relieves some of the tax burden.
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