BC Ferries hires 500 workers ahead of busy summer season

After several BC Ferries cancellations due to staffing issues in recent months, some relief may be on the way. The company has hired hundreds of new workers ahead of the busy summer travel period.

Deborah Marshall with BC Ferries says the company has been aggressively trying to resolve its staffing issues, hiring 500 people after conducting over 1,000 interviews.

“Over the past little while, when we saw the Omicron variant spike, we did have a spike in illness with our employees, so it did cause some service interruptions from time to time. Now that we’re hiring all these new people, we hope to have resiliency in the system and reduce any impacts on our service,” she said.

Training for those new hires can take several weeks.

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Still, BC Ferries acknowledges there are more gaps it needs to fill when it comes to deck and engineering staff and the company is still recruiting for those roles.

Marshall notes, regardless of position, all employees aboard BC Ferries vessels can jump in to help, should there be an emergency during a sailing.

“In the unlikely event of an emergency, all of our crew — right from the catering attendant to the captain or the chief engineer — all have important roles to play.

With files from Martin MacMahon