Mr. Speaker, with regard to (a), no formal consultations took place between Marine Atlantic and stakeholder groups in Newfoundland and Labrador; however, the corporation did have regular informal discussions with members of various stakeholder groups in advance of the schedule change. These discussions centred around decreasing traffic levels with the corporation and trying to better understand the amount of traffic that commercial operators planned on moving during the summer.
With regard to (b), the decision to change the schedule was not based on specified traffic thresholds. The corporation’s traffic has been declining, leading to revenues that were less than anticipated. Marine Atlantic recognized that it needed to change the schedule in order to better match traffic demand with available capacity and to ensure that the corporation could continue to meet its budgetary obligations.
With regard to (c), the projected savings from the 2014 summer schedule changes are approximately $4.13 million.