Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to put our voices forward on this project.
Clearly, BC Ferries has made another bad decision in going offshore.
We've reached out to some of our shipyards to find out what their thoughts were. Canadian shipyards would not have bid on this project. The shipyards would have reviewed the procurement and looked at the likelihood of being successful. Based on their level of competitiveness, they would have declined the process because Canadian shipyards are too expensive to compete on a world market for new ship construction, especially when competing with China, Korea and other shipbuilding nations that have wages significantly lower than those of Canadian workers. They are nations that possess national incentives such as subsidies, or the shipyards are owned by the government of that country, which is the problem with China, of course, and Korea.
The capabilities and facilities are committed to the national shipbuilding strategy. There's an insignificant market for Canadian shipbuilders to maintain large commercial shipbuilding operations unless supported by the NSS. There is a severe lack of skilled labour in Canada to build these vessels.
I'll add that, prior to 2000, all B.C. ferries were built in British Columbia by our members, by the building trades members. The success has been incredible. When this project came online, there was talk of five vessels that they wanted to build. There was a proposal put forward by Davie shipyard in conjunction with people on the west coast. We were going to have a consortium of shipyards and shipyard workers to set up a new facility to build these vessels in Delta, on Annacis Island. We lobbied the provincial government and we lobbied BC Ferries. Clearly, there was no interest whatsoever in dealing with Canadian workers. They wanted nothing to do with the Canadian yards.
In short, we would not be competitive in estimating for construction of these vessels. For a very expensive proposition with no guarantee of success, there was no reason for them to put forward their bids.
The other issue we have is that when BC Ferries goes offshore—and it has done this now a number of times—when it brings the vessel back into the country, the federal government waives the duty on these vessels coming in. There's a 25% duty that protects the industry. That's what was put forward to help protect people and make sure that we keep the industry viable. Prior to the Gordon Campbell government coming in 2000, whenever BC Ferries had a project it wanted to look at, it would bring the industry together. We would all sit at the same table to decide how we were going to do it.
A perfect example is the Spirit-class vessels that are out there. They were done by a consortium of yards on the west coast. These are still the pride of the fleet. They were built by a number of shipyards and it was a very successful project. There were supposed to be four of those; they managed to shelve two of them, so we built only two.
Then we end up with the problem, of course, with the “fast cats”. That was a political decision, not a shipyard decision. The Campbell government decided it was going to punish everybody, so it punished the industry by setting up BC Ferries as we see it today.
There's no self-interest in what we're doing with BC Ferries. They don't put any value in Canadian workers. They just decide that they're going for the low bid and that's the bottom line for them.
I'll leave you with the example of the Jones Act down in the United States. There's a country that protects its industry. It looks after its workers. It goes a step further. Washington state has legislation that says the ferries that are going to operate in Washington state must be built in Washington state.
I'll leave that with the committee.
We'll continue to lobby BC Ferries and the provincial government to make the changes that need to happen.
Thank you very much.