Atlantic Canada gets ferry fare cuts. B.C. gets excuses.

Prime Minister Mark Carney proudly listed cutting ferry fares by 50 per cent in Atlantic Canada as one of his core achievements during a recent fireside chat with Canadians.

Workers, families and coastal communities in the Maritimes deserve affordable marine transportation. But so do people in British Columbia.

Ottawa subsidizes multiple ferry routes in Atlantic Canada. Meanwhile in British Columbia, ferry-dependent communities face rising fares, aging vessels, sailing cancellations and no comparable federal support.

B.C. Ferries are our highways on water. They move workers, food, medicine, tourists and entire regional economies. B.C. moves vastly more passengers than the Atlantic routes, yet gets nowhere near equivalent federal support.

The discrepancy is particularly unfair when you consider just how many more passengers rely on BC Ferries compared to the federally supported routes Carney references in his video.

BC Ferries carries more than 42 times as many passengers each year as federally subsidized ferry routes in Atlantic Canada, excluding Marine Atlantic, which receives separate, additional federal funding.

The truth is, Carney is celebrating a system where B.C. taxpayers fund ferry services in Atlantic Canada through federal taxes while bracing for ferry fare increases in their own province.

If Ottawa believes ferries are nation-building infrastructure in Atlantic Canada, then British Columbia deserves the same respect.