Political Goals of The Fast Ferry Program
Perhaps more important than the need for a more efficient ferry system was the NDP Government's desire to rebuild and collect taxes from the shipbuilding industry of British Columbia. During the early 1900s, shipbuilding in British Columbia was at its greatest, in support of a booming fishing industry. During the Second World War, shipbuilding again peaked with the delivery of two 10,000-ton freighters every week. By the 1990s, however, shipbuilding in British Columbia was nearly dead due, in-part, to the ballooning cost of materials, labour disputes, and increasing competition from Asian shipyards.
Faced with the potential collapse of the west coast ship building industry the New Democratic Party attempted to create business by creating the Fast Ferry Program. Local shipbuilders could emulate the success of Australian shipbuilders such as Incat in Tasmania and Austal Shipbuilding in the global fast ferry market.
In the early planning stages of the project, Australian fast ferry operator Holyman, then one of the biggest and most experienced fast ferry operators in the world, was in talks with BC Ferries and the NDP Government. The Holyman Managing Director and its Global Development Manager met with the Minister for Transport and cautioned him against the BC Ferries FastCat plan. They suggested that a first time builder would find it impossible to construct the vessels on time, within budget, or within weight specification. They also suggested that the intended power would be insufficient to meet targeted speed, even if the vessels were built within weight. Finally, they suggested that the ongoing maintenance and operation of fast ferries required specialised expertise. The company offered its expertise to the government. Their warnings and the offer were ignored.
Read more about this topic: Fast Ferry Scandal
Famous quotes containing the words political, goals, fast, ferry and/or program:
“[When asked: “Will not woman suffrage make the black woman the political equal of the white woman and does not political equality mean social equality?”:] If it does then men by keeping both white and black women disfranchised have already established social equality!”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.”
—Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)
“I don’t go that fast in practice, because I need the excitement of the race, the adrenalin. The others might train more and be in better shape, but when I’m racing, I put winning before everything else. I don’t stop until the world gets gray and fuzzy around the edges.”
—Candi Clark (b. c. 1950)
“What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives to Congress for, of late years?... All their speeches put together and boiled down ... do not match for manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual remarks of crazy John Brown on the floor of the Harper’s Ferry engine-house,—that man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not to represent you there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Chippenhook was the home of Judge Theophilus Harrington, known for his trenchant reply to an irate slave-owner in a runaway slave case. Judge Harrington declared that the owner’s claim to the slave was defective. The owner indignantly demanded to know what was lacking in his legally sound claim. The Judge exploded, ‘A bill of sale, sir, from God Almighty!’”
—For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)