… as a quasi-public entity to consciously lose [some] money during the Olympics — something no private company* would ever do — just because BCF thinks it’ll be good for the community long-term.

The ferry company has added an extra sailings in both directions on the Tsawwassen-Schwartz Bay, Horseshoe Bay to Departure Bay and Langdale-Sunshine Coast routes. Marshall said that the ferry company wants to be able to make sure residents of Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast can go see the Games and sleep in their own beds that night.

The extra sailings cost $2 million each and haven’t been full, Marshall said, adding the company expects traffic to pick up.

“While it’s not a great money-maker opportunity right now, we feel that long-term down the road with tourism it’s a great idea and we wanted to provide that opportunity to residents,” Marshall said.

Of course, this comes on the heels of the government announcing a reform of the Ferry company, perhaps for its compensation practices.

At the same time, the province appeared to single out the quasi-independent B.C. Ferries corporation for “new accountability and transparency” that Campbell said would likely require new legislation. A B.C. Ferries spokeswoman said she had no idea what government was planning.

It’s the latest government shot across B.C. Ferries’ bow. A provincial review last year said ferry executives were being paid too much.

This could be an interesting bit of political gamesmanship. I get the feeling there’s play in British Colombian’s feelings towards the entity. It’s possible to squeeze a lot of feelings out of me, for example, about the company — I have a lot of fond family memories associated with trips to Vancouver: vacations, Expo ’86, coin-op Galaga on-board, sunny school trips in early summer on-deck, learning to fold origami with the foil from my parents’ packages of Player Lights against the safety-ridge of the publican plastic-moulded coffee-square tables while hugging my favorite woolen monkey-doll and felted parrot hand-puppet.

As an adult I’m a committed fiscal progressive-conservative: I don’t mind spending money if its for a good reason, ideally with some kind of statistical measure. The Olympics, for example, are so complex even the accounting for them is up for reasonable debate — for example, how much of the cost for the Canada “RAV” Line should be allocated to the Olympics, which was used politically to push funding for the service through?

To get specific and take a stand: I would prefer BC Ferries to be wholly in public hands, partly for cultural reasons (I think it’s quasi-public status does it a cultural disservice).

As it currently operates, BC Ferries is effectively part of Highway 1, and is a necessary service for the island. It operates as a toll-bridge, and making toll booths private transfers huge amounts of money in very Pareto-efficient ways, making them almost as profitable as the private insurance business. Essentially: a monopoly on essential transport is being slowly transitioned to private hands at great, enduring cost to the public who helped pay to establish it.

I’ve long thought that perhaps — perhaps — the ferry docks should be made accessible to private competitors on the same routes using some kind of impartial round-robin scheduling. This would use the power of the market to provide “free” supplemental schedule coverage to BCF, would create employment, and tax and dock usage fee revenue. However, that might be some kind of third-way utopia that wouldn’t actually work

* I don’t like the conflicting meanings of “public” and “private” companies depending on whether you’re talking about government or business. Accountants have well-defined, but non-snappy words to use (eg, “Canadian Controlled Private Corporation”), but I’d prefer something that rolls more off the tongue… That’ll be another article.