09/14/2025
Update 14 Sept 2025: We love that our ferry service is operating normally these days, but we will face the risk of disruption soon enough.
But we now have an opportunity to call for the kind of change we need. The Ministry of Labour is conducting a Labour Relations Code (LRC) Review and has called for feedback from the public. It's critically important that the Labour Minister receives feedback from as many supporters of inland ferry communities as possible.
The deadline is 4:30pm on September 19, 2025. Send in your thoughts by email at [email protected]. Thank you for your support!
Ferries Are Floating Highways!
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LRC Review Feedback from the Glade Ferry Society:
Dear Minister Whiteside:
Thank you for asking for input regarding needed changes to the Labour Code.
The Glade Ferry Society (GFS) was formed in early January, 2025 to represent our community of 300 residents in meeting the risks to our health, safety, and wellbeing that would result if 2024 BCLRB 180 were implemented. We are all volunteers, committed to addressing this very real existential threat to our community—working closely with and supporting the work of the Harrop-Procter Ferry Committee Society (HPFCS).
Current law is deficient and prejudices rural British Columbians. It erroneously assumes that the private companies contracted to operate inland ferries are in the best position to present the impacts of service reductions or disruptions to the BCLRB.
The BCLRB recognized the deficiencies of this approach in the recent job action involving the Harrop and Glade cable ferries, as BCLRB Chair Jennifer Glougie noted in her January 5, 2025 opinion (Kootenay Lake Ferry Division (Western Pacific MarineLtd.), 2025 BCLRB 4):
"While the Employer focussed its submission on the impact the reduction will have on residents' ability to earn an income (an income on which it says they depend to fund the necessities of life), I am concerned that there are a myriad of ways in which such a reduction - in the absence of an alternative route - may present an immediate threat to the welfare of the residents of the Affected Communities. I am also concerned that the issue of welfare does not appear to have been fully canvassed by the parties before the original panel." (emphasis added)
After the HPFCS hired a respected law firm to represent them in that dispute, the GFS mobilized to support them, mostly with various fundraising initiatives. Their law firm filed a comprehensive motion for standing, a motion which was never adjudicated in light of the parties’ agreement to interest arbitration. HPFCS incurred tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, just to try to get community voices and impact directly heard by the BCLRB.
This was neither fair nor equitable. The private companies operating inland ferries are expert in the operation and maintenance of those vessels, not in the unique needs of the communities on either side of those ferries. Allowing the affected communities to directly present that impact to the LRB would streamline proceedings, give the LRB accurate factual information on which to make essential services designations, and would address a glaring inequity in the current state of the law.
On behalf of the Glade Ferry Society,
Respectfully,
Anne Mowat, Chair, and Rob Girard, Vice-Chair
September 9, 2025
