BC Ferries is now recovering from its Easter long weekend issues, but passengers may be surprised to learn that fares are going up on Wednesday by an average of 3.2 per cent.
“Gas, ferries, food… it makes it really hard on people,” passenger April Joe said.
Starting on Wednesday, it will be $5 more for a car and driver sailing between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay, so the new standard rate on this route, with a reservation, will be $110 each way.
“The fare increases were set a number of years ago and that’s just to keep up with what we need to operate,” BC Ferries CEO Nicolas Jimenez told Global News on Monday.
Jiminez and B.C.’s Transportation Minister, Mike Farnworth, have called on the federal government to subsidize BC Ferries to the same rate as eastern ferry operations.
B.C. receives around three per cent from the federal government.
Last July, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a 50 per cent cut in ferry fares for the Eastern Canada Ferry Services which serve P.E.I., Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec and Marine Atlantic, the constitutionally-mandated ferry service that connects Newfoundland to Nova Scotia.
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At the time, B.C. Premier David Eby said major new subsidies for East Coast ferries, but not for those in B.C., are a symptom of “structural unfairness.”
Jiminez said that a review of what happened on the Easter long weekend is underway, but the union believes the organization is top-heavy.
“Management is bigger than anyone can remember,” Eric McNeely, president of the BC Ferry and Marine Workers’ Union, said.
“And the number of vessels hasn’t really changed.”
In the 2025 fiscal year, Jiminez’s total compensation was $530,000, which included $15,000 toward the use of a condo in Victoria, where BC Ferries is based.
“I live in North Vancouver and I work in Victoria,” Jiminez said.
“So I’m away from my family Monday to Thursday and I do that because it’s a privilege to be in the job that I’m in. I feel it’s important to be in Victoria, where our head office is, but it’s also important for me to be inside the system, so I move every week inside the system on the ferry.”
McNeely said the balance is still off.
“You have someone who’s working on terminals not getting full-time shifts, maybe going to the food bank, and the CEO’s making more than half a million dollars and that includes a taxable benefit with housing,” he said. “It’s hard to square that.”
The current ferry model, introduced by the BC Liberals in 2003, includes four layers of bureaucracy.
There are two separate boards with a total of 19 directors.
The fare increase won’t apply to them, however, as they and their immediate family members sail for free.
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