CHEK News - January 13, 2016<\/p>\n
There\u2019s growing outrage over the sale of a BC Ferries ship for what critics say was a rock-bottom price.<\/p>\n
The Queen of Chilliwack went through a $15 million re-fit just three years ago yet it was reportedly sold for less than $2 million and two more Vancouver Island ferries could be next.<\/p>\n
After five decades, the Queen of Burnaby\u2019s coming to the end of her run.<\/p>\n
The ferry will soon be put up for sale, after being plagued by mechanical problems for the last few years.<\/p>\n
\u201cBC ferries is an embarrassment,\u201d Powell River resident\u00a0Chris Walford said this week. \u201cIt\u2019s ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ship, which went through a $12 million re-fit in 2011, is once again out of service on the Comox to Powell River run, replaced by a much smaller vessel.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are not happy at all,\u201d said ferry user\u00a0Rick McIntosh.\u00a0\u201cI mean there\u2019s got to be a better way. We have to have some sort of a back up system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Queen of Chilliwack could have been used\u00a0as a back-up<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Many are questioning why the Queen of Chilliwack wasn\u2019t kept as a back-up. Instead, the ferry \u2014 which underwent a $15 million refit in 2012 \u2014 was recently sold to a former BC Ferries employee George Goundar of Goundar Shipping<\/a> in Fiji who says he paid less than $2 million.<\/p>\n \u201cApparently there\u2019s virtually no backup available on the fleet at all so to sell a ferry you just spent $15 million on for cents on the dollar, given this particular circumstance, makes no sense to us at all,\u201d says NDP ferry critic Gary Holman.<\/p>\n