VANCOUVER — B.C. Ferries continues to keep secret the recent sale price of a decommissioned ship to a Fijian shipping firm despite a report from the island country suggesting that the Queen of Chilliwack was bought for about $1.8 million Cdn.
The figure is contained in a March 26, 2014, story in the Fiji Times about the purchase of a “third vessel” by Goundar Shipping Ltd., which is owned and operated by George Goundar, a former long-serving employee of B.C. Ferries who now operates a ferry service in his home country.
The online story says Goundar was in “Canada for more than five weeks to seal the deal on the third vessel,” which was “bought for $3 million” ($3 million Fijian is about $1.8 million Cdn).
It was to sail to “Fiji from Canada” after amendments to Fiji’s maritime laws came into effect, according to the report.
However, B.C. Ferries spokeswoman Deborah Marshall said in a recent interview that the Queen of Chilliwack wasn’t sold to Goundar Shipping until September 2015.
As for its sale price, she said it continues to be withheld to avoid compromising the future sale of two more B.C. Ferries ships.
“We are going to have the Queen of Burnaby and the Queen of Nanaimo go up for sale within the next six months,” Marshall said.
“We don’t want to compromise the bidding process for those ships. … All I can confirm is that it [the Queen of Chilliwack] was sold in September of 2015.”
The dateline of the Fiji Times story is one of several inconsistencies surrounding the sale of the Queen of Chilliwack.
Several months ago, the NDP raised questions in the legislature relating to the reported $15-million refit the ship received in the years before it was officially retired in 2013.
British Columbians facing massive increases in ferry fares deserve to know why Ferries poured $15 million into the refit, then practically gave the vessel away, Gary Holman, the NDP’s deputy spokesperson on B.C. Ferries, said Tuesday.
“B.C. Ferries spent $15 million refitting the Queen of Chilliwack, then almost immediately turned around to sell it at more than a $13-million loss,” Holman said.
“It’s no surprise that [Premier] Christy Clark’s government and B.C. Ferries are hiding the sale price of the Queen of Chilliwack to a company in Fiji,” he said.
“They sold this ferry for a fraction of the cost of what they paid to refit it.”
