Cat ferry

Tara Manthorne,

MacDonald says Bay Ferries worked with CBP all winter to ensure ferry service for this year. He says part of the customs equipment that has to be installed was removed from the terminal when ferry service stopped after 2009. MacDonald says the equipment will provide more efficient processing of passengers and shorter processing time, which is good for everyone.

“These are the kind of issues that we deal with regularly in this business. There is a financial cost, which forms part of the cost of the ferry service,” he says.

The City of Portland has stated it wouldn’t pay for the required CBP upgrades.

Asked if this year’s work is a stopgap until next year, MacDonald says, “Our objective, ultimately, is to get the service to a place where it’s predictable, sustainable and out of the news and in the market and where cus- tomers can rely on it from year to year without there being annual discussion.”

He does say there is ongoing consideration to perhaps making use of the port of Bar Harbor in the future. There has also been talk of a pre-clearance customs centre in Nova Scotia but that’s a complex issue.

MARKETING

Bay Ferries says it will be carrying out its usual robust marketing centred on, but not exclusive to, the U.S. northeast. Aside from its own marketing Bay Ferries works in conjunction with Tourism Nova Scotia, which markets the province to visitors.

Bay Ferries will continue to do all of the provisioning for the ferry in Nova Scotia, using Yarmouth and Nova Scotia supplies and products for the Sip@Sea onboard food operation and the gift shop, which provides employment to locals and Nova Scotians. Local residents have also been staffed and trained as visitor information counsellors on the boat to assist ferry passengers with travel information about Nova Scotia.

“Fueling is done on the Nova Scotia side and all of our maintenance is done on this side and our crew resides on this side during the summer. It’s actually the first time in the history of the Yarmouth ferry service that the ferry has been based in Yarmouth with the exception of a very brief period back in 2006,” MacDonald says, noting previous ferries have often gotten their provisions on the U.S. side. “Now everything happens in Yarmouth so we’re quite proud of that.”

With the late evening arrivals and early morning departures of the ferry Yarmouth is where people start or end their trips – which greatly benefits this area – but visitation from the ferry is spread throughout the province. In an opinion piece she wrote last year, Tourism Industry As- sociation of Nova Scotia (TIANS) president Darlene Grant Fiander said there is an economic impact from the ferry service and to look at it solely as a cost because of a subsidy is wrong and doesn’t take into totality the benefit of the service to the province’s tourism picture due to passenger visitation and expenditures in Nova Scotia.

Beyond this, she said, “over 70 new jobs have been created directly as a result of the service; 50 companies from Nova Scotia are supplying goods and services; the ferry company is spending over $11 million of its operating costs here with $4.4 in fuel being purchased in Canada. A number of new businesses have started and existing businesses have expanded.”

Last year the province committed $9.4 million for the operation of the ferry. What the province will spend on the service this year was to be outlined in the provincial budget presented on March 20, after this newspaper’s deadline.

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