By Dominic Abassi

Proponent eager to ‘get on with it’ after being tabbed best foot ferry option for Nanaimo

Jan 6, 2017 | 6:47 PM

NANAIMO — Fourteen months after a passenger ferry proponent told Nanaimo council they were ready to establish service to Vancouver, the city has announced that same proponent is the best operator available.

A city release issued Friday states that the advisory group tasked with reviewing three potential operators has recommended that Island Ferry Services Ltd. (IFSL) is the “preferred proponent” to establish and run passenger ferry service between Nanaimo and Vancouver.

“We’re certainly happy to see that the city, the Port and Snuneymuxw First Nation have made some progress on the file,” said David Marshall, IFSL’s director of marine operations, in conversation with NanaimoNewsNOW. “We do remain concerned that the process to figure out with whom they…want to enter into discussions about a lease has already taken some 13 months and that’s going to take another undefined period of time.”

Marshall says they are “delighted” to be chosen as the preferred proponent to provide a “service folks in Nanaimo have wanted for a very, very long time.”

The city release states business management consultant Ernst & Young, who was a member of the original review group, will now perform a financial and technical review directly with IFSL, “to determine their ability to provide a ferry service between Nanaimo and Vancouver.”

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If that is successful, IFSL and the Nanaimo Port Authority (NPA) would then begin lease negotiations, according to the release.

In Nov. 2015, Marshall says his company told council during an in-camera meeting they had finally secured a final piece of necessary funding and were ready to get the service off the ground. A month later, council terminated their agreement with IFSL. At the end of March 2016, the city, Port and Snuneymuxw issued an open call for interested ferry operators.

“We are 13 months further down the road and we have continued to spend money on a monthly basis,” said Marshall. “So yes, there’s a sense of frustration and a sense of let’s get on with it, from our perspective. We’ve asked whether or not that same sense of urgency exists elsewhere, because we certainly haven’t seen it.”

Marshall says all of the necessary capital and their principal investor are still in place.

NPA president Bernie Dumas says they’re disappointed this process has taken so long. The release issued Friday was the first public statement on the foot ferry efforts since a Nov. 10, 2016 release stating the advisory group had presented its findings.

“We see the time spent as a valuable time to review and scrutinize…we did it a certain way which we thought was going to be transparent and effective and it did take a little longer than we expected, but it is what it is,” said Dumas.

Dumas was asked why so much due diligence is being performed when in effect IFSL is a private company simply looking for land and facilities to lease, and no public money is at stake.

“It’s a good question…we had reasons why we’re doing it this way. We’re really making sure that the carrier that we appoint or select is going to give us a long-term service.”

Marshall says he “can’t even guess” when ferries may actually sail between Nanaimo and Vancouver.

“I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess,” Marshall said. “I wouldn’t have thought that the last process would take over a year, so on that basis, I really have no idea how long this next step is going to take.”

Dumas says if the upcoming review is positive, they would get into a negotiation for the Port infrastructure “fairly quickly.” He says lease negotiations will centre around a potential IFSL operation working out of the cruise ship terminal and dock.