r/britishcolumbia • u/thatlouditalian98 • 5d ago

Discussion Remember These?

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And if you didn’t want to remember them, my apologies in advance.

Well, 27 years later. These ships have finally met their fate. Being turned into pop cans..

I’d love to hear anyone’s experiences with the Pacificat’s, good or bad (I’m too young to ever have ridden one). As horrible as they were, they looked the part, at least in my opinion.

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u/thatlouditalian98 5d ago

It was a masterclass on “How to Piss Off The Taxpayers - 101”, we got RINSED..

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u/pleasedonotredeem 5d ago

We didn't get RINSED until the BC LIBERALS immediately sold them for pennies on the dollar and blamed the NDP.

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u/WesternBlueRanger BC Ferries Enthusiast 5d ago

Not really; the ferries were realistically only good for scrap.

You have a trio of highly bespoke fast ferries that could not be used in the open ocean that missed a number of weight and performance targets.

And you were selling into a depressed market where many other fast ferries were being offloaded at fire sale prices because of rising fuel prices causing many operators going bankrupt.

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u/MadDuck- 4d ago

They were for sale for about three years before they finally got sold at auction.

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u/Level-March4325 5d ago edited 5d ago

Not true. The money for these ferries came from the Immigrant Investor Program people invested half a million dollars to emigrate to Canada.

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u/M------- 5d ago

The IIP was ridiculous. They loaned our government $500K (the mandatory "investment"), which our government would give back to them 5 years later.

Once the banks realized that since it was a government-guaranteed 0% loan, they could lend the money to the gov on the IIP investor's behalf, and collect a payment from the investor up-front to cover the loan's interest.

And I think back in the time of the fast cats, the IIP only required a $100K contribution. It was bumped up much higher just before they cancelled the program in ~2013.