B.C. Ferries says a staffing shortage has led to cancelled sailings connecting Metro Vancouver to the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island.
A number of sailings between Metro Vancouver and Victoria have been called off because there are no available crew members on the Queen of New Westminster to ensure the safety of passengers, B.C. Ferries said in a statement on their website.
Despite recruiting efforts underway ahead of the busy summer season, 8 sailings on major routes connecting Tsawwassen to Vancouver Island were cancelled in a 48-hour period because of staffing shortages at BC. Ferries.
The cancellations impacted routes to and from both Nanaimo and Victoria.
“Our crewing department actively works very hard to try to fill all the positions so we don’t have to cancel any sailings, but unfortunately the past couple of days we had to cancel a few,” said BC Ferries spokesperson Deborah Marshall on Tuesday.
While COVID-19 is still a factor, the biggest challenge is filling hundreds of staff vacancies.
“Our (human resources) department has been actively recruiting, and over the past several months we have hired about 850 new staff members,” said Marshall, adding the majority are seasonal employees for the summer months. “But we still have about 150 more positions to recruit.”
Travellers are being warned to book ahead and prepare for possible delays as BC Ferries heads into Easter – one of the busiest long weekends of the year and typically the start of the summer travel season.
The company says it has added extra sailings on the Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay route starting Thursday and its Horseshoe Bay routes on Friday, but an ongoing staffing crunch due to COVID-19 could still cause problems.
“While we are planning a full suite of extra sailings on the weekend, we have seen some occasions, isolated incidents over the past month or so where we have had to cancel service on short notice due to crew illness, and what we are finding right now, with the new variant, we are starting to see an increase in illness again,” BC Ferries spokesperson Deborah Marshall said.
Crew shortages resulted in multiple BC Ferries cancellations over the weekend and as the Easter long weekend looms, some employees say the cancellations will continue.
“It’s going to get more difficult. We are expecting more cancellations than what currently has been announced,” said Glen, a BC Ferries crew member whose identity CHEK News is protecting.
“It’s going to be a frustrating weekend for passengers.”
After BC Ferries cancelled two sailings between Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland on August 4, 2021, its president and CEO Mark Collins issued a statement pinning the service disruptions on crew shortages. Three officers had called in sick, and replacements couldn’t be found on short notice.
BC Ferries was in the process of recruiting 60 officers and 50 other employees for key positions to create redundancy in the system. But the company was struggling to fill those positions. Qualified workers were “very difficult to find,” Collins said, partly due to a global mariner shortage.
The global mariner shortage isn’t new, it’s just being newly felt by the public. The pandemic has exacerbated the problem, disrupting supply chains and transportation services.