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Viewpoint: User-pay system does not work

By Shawn Russell I would like to share some thoughts and opinions regarding what I believe to be one of the most important issues facing the people of BC and especially the coastal regions.

By Shawn Russell I would like to share some thoughts and opinions regarding what I believe to be one of the most important issues facing the people of BC and especially the coastal regions.

First I will tell you a fictional story about a guy who opens a restaurant to serve his local community. His business is doing very well because the economy is strong and he has no competitors. One day he forms a corporation and hires a CEO to run the business. The CEO and the top managers pay themselves so well and live so extravagantly that along with ignoring a downturn in the economy they start to really lose a lot of money. Not deterred they give all the staff bonuses and company perks and just increase their prices. Soon their prices get so high that they start losing customers, so they decide to start closing the restaurant for a few hours every day. Meanwhile they give themselves more bonuses and raises and start cutting down on maintenance. In the world of government corporations it is truly the norm.

Over the last 10 years I have had to use the ferries a lot, first in my own business and now as a truck driver for another local business. What I have witnessed in these 10 years has been truly shocking. What is happening now is downright criminal. The fact that a government corporation can, to serve its own interest, hold whole towns, communities and islands hostage is outrageous. The ferry system is an essential service to the people of BC’s coastal lands and has no business trying to be a for-profit business. If it costs “x” amount to operate this service paying the employees a decent wage that’s what it costs. We should be real about this, not cut the service.

If we decided to close a few roads in the BC Interior to save some money there would be an uproar. We on the coast pay a huge percentage of the taxes to build and maintain all the roads in BC. How about a user-pay system for all the roads? If only the people that used the roads had to pay for all the cost of building and maintaining the roads you would find the cost to drive some of those roads to be ridiculous.

In Powell River we have a bus service. This service is for the convenience of a very small percentage of the population. This service is being provided and funded by tax dollars. If we had user-pay system here it would probably cost $3,000 to ride from Westview to Wildwood.

I wonder what it would cost each taxpayer per year to operate the ferries if all the taxpayers of the province chipped in their fair share? Can you imagine economic growth in Powell River if the ferries were free to all BC residents? It takes a higher level of thinking to get us out of the troubles someone’s thinking got us into.

Shawn Russell is a concerned citizen living in Powell River.