BC Ferries says it’s getting ready for the long weekend traffic

The CEO of BC Ferries says the corporation is preparing for its busiest weekend of the year.

In a news conference Wednesday, Nicolas Jimenez says the company is taking steps to keep people moving as smoothly as possible throughout the weekend, following a tumultuous few weeks.

He adds that they are also working on long-term solutions to combat the numerous challenges that the corporation has faced.

“This company is in a difficult space, and it’s the industry, and I represent the company in this industry, we’ve identified that we’ve got a number of problems that need to be addressed — these are not short-term fixes,” he said.

Jimenez says all of its vessels will be in service over the weekend, adding there are backup plans in place in case something goes wrong. However, he says challenges are inevitable.

“We’re putting every vessel into service, we have teams at the ready in case something goes wrong,” he said.

“We move 60,000 people a day, 450 sailings a day. The question isn’t: ‘Is it going to happen?’ it’s: ‘How quickly can you react when it does happen and how do you move on from the incident when it does occur?'”

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As for staffing challenges, which previously added to a number of cancellations over the May long weekend, Jimenez says they are hiring as much crew as they can, and increasing training and compensation to entice employees to stay.

He adds that fixing some of the challenges the organization is facing will take time.

“I think the business, and I’ve said this before, needs more resilience. We need to address things around staffing, things around assets, terminals, vessels et cetera, and we’re doing that work and we’re going to keep doing that work but it’s going to be a long-term fix, not a fix that happens in the next month or two,” he said.

Jimenez notes that the corporation’s technology does need upgrading, and says they’ve added server capacity in the interim.

He notes that the inaccurate wait times that were previously displayed have been fixed, and expects accurate communication on the Current Conditions page.

With files from Emily Marsten