With the transport committee about to investigate a $1B public loan to BC Ferries, let’s hope they can extract some details on the contract. Let’s not pretend this was all business. The contract is going to a state-run Chinese company. China is known to engage aggressively in political/economic manipulation to secure its goals. Our own security establishment has flagged this many times, and our PM has labelled the country our biggest threat.
Key questions remain. Which companies were “pre-qualified” to bid on this contract and why? How did they ensure it remained free from influence campaigns (e.g., sponsored trips and other perks to BC Ferries decision makers)? Was forced labour in the supply chain even a consideration?
The statement about it “potentially” being $1.2B more to build at an unspecified European shipyard feels like a diversion tactic. BC Ferries hand-picked the shipyards to bid and, if the decision to go with Weihai was made from the start, then strong competitors could have been filtered out (for instance, no Korean/Japanese/Taiwanese shipyards were considered?). Moreover, if cost was such a concern, then were alternative options considered, like retrofitting older vessels again or going with a well-established ship design rather than a complicated and expensive novel hybrid design?
Security is important enough that we’ve blocked China from building our telecommunications infrastructure, and yet we’re about to create a critical dependency on the country for a key transportation corridor to a provincial capital.
James Mason
Saanich
