BC Ferries’ list of sins just keeps on growing.

Massive executive pay and benefits. Blowing a million bucks on advertising at Rogers Arena. Cancelled sailings. Slumping travel numbers. Rising fare costs. $1.3 billion in new debt. It hasn’t been a good 12 months.
So who is to blame?

David Hahn, the BC Ferries boss, who makes a million bucks a year and is preparing for an almost $400,000 annual pension to begin in a few years, is the name most frequently uttered with disdain. But last week, Vancouver Sun columnist Stephen Hume made a compelling case to hold the BC Ferries Board accountable:

While it seems reasonable for readers (who are also the principals) to ask whether BC Ferries managers have met the criteria for bonuses in the context of the company's performance, I'm not the person to ask.

That's a question for the board of directors, which both sets the criteria and evaluates performance in meeting them.

So who are the directors?

From the B.C. Ferry Services Inc. website:

Donald P. Hayes is the chairman. President and CEO of Prima Colombia Hardwood Inc., which has interests in forestry in South America, he gets a $100,000 retainer plus per diem fees of $1,200. His total compensation for the fiscal year ended March 31 was $130,316.

Other directors, who each get a $25,000 retainer plus the $1,200 per diem, and whose remuneration totalled $398,427 in the last fiscal year, include:

Elizabeth J. Harrison, a corporate lawyer with Farris, Vaughan, Wills & Murphy; Brian G. Kenning, a past governor of the B.C. Business Council and a former director of BC Rail; Gordon R. Larkin, a longtime commercial fisherman who recently retired from a position with the Canadian Labour Congress; Maureen V. Macarenko, a customs broker involved in the global marine industry who is also president of the Prince Rupert Airport Authority; P. Geoffrey Plant, a Harvard-educated lawyer who was B.C.'s attorney-general in the Liberal government of Gordon Campbell and is chairman of the board of Providence Health Care; Wayne H. Stoilen, formerly executive vice-president of Canadian Stevedoring Company and its subsidiary Casco Terminals Ltd.; and Graham M. Wilson, a former executive with West Coast Energy, PetroCanada and MacMillan Bloedel.

Hume is bang-on. It’s time for the BC Ferries Board of Directors to come forward and offer answers to ferry users and BC taxpayers. Are they happy with what is going on? What is their plan to turn things around? Is BC Ferries headed for financial disaster? What comfort can they offer British Columbians that things are under control?