by Klaus Rohrich
September 13, 2004
Once again, government has proven itself to be the problem, rather than the solution. In this instance, it’s government action (and inaction) that has caused the ferry service between Rochester, NY and Toronto to be suspended indefinitely.
For those who haven’ taken the ferry, it was a speedy and stylish way to travel between Toronto and Rochester. The ferry featured plush, comfortable seating, restaurant service, a bar, duty free store, two movie theatres and a speedy transit across the lake, arriving at its destination in just over two hours.
Canada’s Department of Immigration was charging the ferry service $2500.00 per day to provide customs officers to the ferry terminal to process the visitors to Toronto. actions such as these take major balls on the part of the immigration department, as they did not have to go out and hire new customs and immigrations officers to staff this port of entry. Naturally, a $75,000 monthly expense is punitive and isn’t easily borne even by the strongest business, much less one in the startup phase.
What’s ironic is that, the government of Canada, the province of Ontario and the city of Toronto are jointly and severally spending millions of dollars annually in efforts to lure american tourists along with their wallets to Canada. Reading many of the high-end american magazines, such as Vanity Fair or Vogue one is likely to come across an ad inviting the reader to visit Canada/Ontario/Toronto. What would you guess and ad in Vogue magazine costs? a full page, full colour ad in Vogue costs $94,470 USD!
In a recent issue of architectural Digest the city of Toronto had purchased some 12 pages of advertising. Upon checking aD’s rate card, the cost of those ads was $69,277USD per page, or over $831,000 USD for just that one issue. So on the one hand our various governments are blowing millions in taxpayer dollars encouraging american tourists to come to Canada. On the other, those same levels of government are swarming like maggots all over the carcass of a business that’s attempting to provide a means to help realize those governments’ goals. Go figure.
On the american side things aren’t much better. One of the prime sources of revenue for the ferry service, particularly during the winter months would have been ferrying trucks between Rochester and Toronto. It was a plan that was brilliant in its simplicity, as it would ultimately have been a lot cheaper for truckers to take the ferry across, rather than drive. But that dream was pretty well nixed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) who kyboshed the whole deal by refusing to allow trucks to cross using the ferry.
On the one hand, one can understand that terrorism and homeland security policy would be an important concern, but on the other, that should not preclude the INS from their ability to clear commercial traffic at the Port of Rochester, as they have been clearing international shipments there for decades.
The city government of Rochester is deeply troubled by the cessation of the ferry service, as they, too were counting on an influx of tourist dollars, not only from Canadian tourists visiting Rochester, but also from american tourists who were in transit to Toronto.
Rochester’s Mayor recently lamented that if only Canadian american Transportation Services (CaTS) the owners of the ferry service had approached the city for a loan, they would have gladly obliged. It would have been nice for Rochester to make this offer known before the ferry closed, rather than after. But, like they say in Texas, it’s a day late and a dollar short.
Hope is that the ferry will resume operations in april of ’05. That would be nice, but given the greedy nature of politicians on both sides of the border, I wouldn’t hold my breath.