What the heck is happening with the NWT’s ferries?

The NWT only has four ferries serving its highways. Three of them have been withdrawn from service for days this summer because of unscheduled emergency work.

Outside Wrigley, the MV Johnny Berens was out of action for nearly two weeks in June. At Tsiigehtchic, the MV Louis Cardinal was shut down for nearly six days.

The latest ferry to suffer an unplanned shutdown is the MV Lafferty at Fort Simpson. On Wednesday, the NWT’s Department of Infrastructure said it was aiming to return that ferry to service on Sunday, which would mark a closure of just over a week.

The territory’s ferries don’t just carry passengers. They are also carrying goods trucks to and from small communities that have no alternative road access, and extended closures can cause disruption to everything from fuel and grocery deliveries to local tourism.

We now know the Wrigley and Tsiigehtchic ferries were withdrawn from service after Transport Canada inspectors found irregularities related to fire suppression systems on those vessels. Those systems were understood to have been moved as employees tried to improve the ferries’ operations, but then work was not completed before inspectors arrived.

The MV Lafferty has suffered a separate part failure not related to any recent inspection. The cost of all the work on ferries this summer has not yet been tallied, the GNWT said, and Transport Canada’s inspections have now concluded.

Speaking on Tuesday, infrastructure minister Caroline Wawzonek told Cabin Radio that taken together, this summer’s issues suggest off-season servicing of NWT ferries “clearly needs to be more robust.”

“Something in our process needs to be fixed, because it’s not OK to have something that’s partly done or not completed in advance of an inspection, or really in advance of the sailing season at all,” the minister said.

Below, read a transcript of our interview with the minister about the closures and how they will be addressed.

This interview was recorded on July 16, 2024. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ollie Williams: Is there any update on the MV Lafferty outside Fort Simpson and when we might expect that ferry to be back in operation?

Caroline Wawzonek: As soon as possible. But as with a lot of these ferries for the last few weeks, they have a part specially ordered. They’re getting it up as fast as they can out of Alberta. I think it’s still going to be a couple of days.

What exactly has gone wrong with that ferry, to your knowledge?

There was some regularly scheduled maintenance on the engine, so nothing untoward. When they pulled it out and began the work, they realized there were issues with the engine, such that options really weren’t to just try to do maintenance and a bit of repair. They had to pull it out and get a part brought up and that’s what’s resulted in far more than just delays but an actual full shutdown. I think they were able to source it quite quickly, which obviously is positive, but that doesn’t really help for the folks who are anxiously wondering when it will reopen.

Why are we suddenly facing a succession of these problems?

That has been a top question of mine and of the department as well.

This one is certainly different than the other two. In the case of the other two, there was Transport Canada that came in and did inspections and identified the need to have shutdowns and do some work. In each case, we brought in parts and had folks work into the night, late into the morning, through weekends to get them going. The pace of getting the repairs done was quickly but, ideally, it should be happening during the off-season. That’s not lost on me or the department.

We are already looking at what we need to do during the off-season to improve our own processes. There is a process in place where at the end of the season, they do an inspection, they come up with a work plan. That clearly needs to be more robust. I’d like to ensure that it’s cross-referenced against what Transport Canada’s doing so that we don’t run into these situations as best as we can, that we can run into these problems and identify them – if there are any – during the off-season, so that during the retrofit period, which is early spring, that’s when we get these things up to speed and back into the water for the summer.

So Transport Canada inspectors went to visit the Wrigley ferry and the Arctic Red River ferry and basically failed both of them. Have the Transport Canada inspectors seen the MV Lafferty or the MV Abraham Francis yet?

I would push back on ‘failed’ because, in the one instance with the MV Johnny Berens, there was a fire suppression system that someone went in to move, simply to try to improve the operation of the ferry from the perspective of ballast and weight. What I need to identify is, for one reason or another, that work started going after we’d done our initial inspection. So it was fine when we did ours, and then that the work got going, didn’t get completed, Transport Canada comes in and says, “Hey, you have this system that’s not put back together.” The other one has found a similar issue with it.

Some of our systems are grandfathered in under various regulations. When you start to take them apart and tinker with them, you’re no longer grandfathered once you tinker with it. You have to get a whole new upgrade.

So you know, is it a complete failure? No. I don’t want the public to think the ferries are unsafe. We’re not going to put boats in the water that are unsafe. That said, you want them to be operating at their maximum, operating at their prime, maintained as best they can be. I don’t know where Transport Canada have gone or what inspections they have done.

The Abraham Francis is the only one of the GNWT’s active ferries that hasn’t yet been affected in some way in the past few weeks. Is there any danger of that one being pulled out of service almost on a precautionary basis, now, to get some sort of check?

No. Some of the work that gets done in terms of preventative maintenance and inspections can happen while the ferry remains operational. That was exactly what was supposed to be happening with the Lafferty. The Abraham Francis is actually the second-youngest of the two. Right now it’s mid-life. As far as whether we will now want to go back in and conduct further inspections and make sure, in light of the first two, that can be something I’ll follow up with the department on, but there are regularly scheduled processes where every ferry does get inspected, gets monitored, gets looked at through the season and thereafter.

The two instances of these fire suppression systems that wound up with Transport Canada issues, each one was a bit unusual in how they came to pass. As for the Lafferty, again, totally different issue and not one that we expected, because we thought we were just going to be doing preventative maintenance. I’m hopeful that three out of four is where we will end for this year.

You raised the issue of the ferries’ age. At least one vessel is more than 50 years old. What is end-of-life for these ferries? How long are they supposed to go? When is the GNWT anticipating eventually having to just buy a new ferry?

So actually, two of them are over 50. One is 52, one is 63. I’ve actually asked that as well, and the life expectancy on these ships, it really is that they could be continuous. But they do require either a retrofit or a refit and some significant work to be done on them. I believe one of the older ones has already gone through that process. So at this point, the expectation is if we can keep them properly maintained, and doing the kind of preventative maintenance that we should be, that they can stay afloat without any need for immediate replacement.

What kind of changes are you envisaging in the winter season ahead in terms of how we make sure this doesn’t happen again?

When the second one went down, myself and our senior management team were immediately asking these questions: what are we going to do to not let this happen again before the sailing season next year?

And as I said, there already are scheduled maintenance processes. But clearly, if they were in the process of doing something and didn’t get it completed, and Transport Canada comes in, then something in our process needs to be fixed, because it’s not OK to have something that’s partly done or not completed in advance of an inspection, or really in advance of the sailing season at all. So looking at ensuring there’s alignment between our inspection process and Transport Canada’s, ensuring that whatever they’re looking for, we are maintaining the same level and same requirements.

I’m not concerned so much that our systems are failing in terms of public safety, but there are best practices and we want to make sure that we’re staying on top of them. And there may be simply rules or regulations that Transport Canada has that, again, we don’t want to get shut down on a technicality. We want to maintain our inspections to align with theirs.

That work plan needs to be ready not at the beginning of the season, it needs to be done really at the end of the season, so that there can be a work plan during the off-season over the winter period, and as much work as can be done over the winter gets done.

It’s a tough season when we’ve already got a number of other transportation challenges, whether it’s the rail line to the barges and so on and so forth. Then we have refit season, that final review and that final sign-off of: not only have we done ours, but we brought it up to the inspection standards for Transport Canada. We can’t afford to be shut down mid-season by that inspection. That inspection really should be, in my view, kind-of in the bag.