BC Ferries is the short name for British Columbia Ferry Services Inc. It is a self-financing company with a mandate to widen travel choices for users and to improve the quality of services.

BC Ferries offers ferry service under a service contract with the Province of BC.  Through this contract, the government pays BC Ferries  a defined annual subsidy or “service fee” in return for making specified numbers of ferry sailings on specified routes, with a maximum total value of some $106 million per year.  The major routes (the three routes between Vancouver Island and the BC Lower Mainland) are self-supporting and receive no service fee from provincial taxpayer funds. The terms of this long-term contract are to be reviewed next in 2008, and thereafter every four years.

You will find a technical but short description of its terms on the page titled Contract with Province button on the left, and you can download find the full text of the contract (a 5.5MB PDF file) by clicking here.

BC Ferries’ Operations

BC Ferries’ services link Vancouver Island to the mainland of British Columbia, and also connect many isolated coastal communities to either Vancouver Island or the mainland.

The company runs ferry service from Prince Rupert, on the north coast of the province, to the Queen Charlotte Islands, and to Port Hardy on the northern end of Vancouver Island. In addition, the Discovery Coast Passage offers summer service between Port Hardy and Bella Coola on the central coast, with additional ports of call en route.

Its 38 vessels travel between 48 terminals, on 25 routes. The company’s workforce consists of unionized and management employees. The workforce includes 2,800 full-time workers, plus 1,700 casual (on-call) employees. All unionized employees are members of the B.C. Ferry and Marine Workers’ Union.

During the 2002/03 fiscal year BC Ferries (as its predecessor, the British Columbia Ferry Corporation), carried 21.6 million passengers and 8.3 million vehicles, generating $490 million in revenue.

You will find a brief historical account of the evolution of BC Ferries through the buttons on the left. The account is divided into three phases: up to 1960, which is the period preceding government operations; the period 1960 through 2003 when the province operated the ferry system either directly through the Ministry of Highways or through a crown corporation; and from 2003 onwards, when the status of BC Ferries was changed under an arrangement which can be described as “publicly owned but private-functioning”.

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