It’s the cutting season. No, I’m not talking about grass although the whine of lawn mowers will soon be echoing around the river valley. The cuts I’m referring to are to ferries and to the CBC. They’re both New Brunswick institutions that have been around for many years and their demise is going to affect us all.
The provincial government decided in its budget to end river ferry service in Gagetown, Hampstead and Belleisle. There have been letters printed and stories written about the governments position and the fight to retain the services in this paper and others for weeks now. The province says it can’t afford to keep the ferries operating because not enough people use them and they’ll soon need to be replaced at a great cost. The people from Gagetown, Queenstown, Hampstead and up and down the river valley and even right across the country argue they can’t drop the ferry service because it would mean the end of these communities. They say the ferries are their lifeblood. It’s what connects them, keeps the economy going, attracts tourists to the region and serves them in times of need like in a medical emergency. These are all sound reasons to keep the ferries and I’m not going to repeat them all here. In my mind the important thing to remember is these ferries are basically like public roads. If a road became impassable, like many around here almost have this spring due to potholes, you’d expect the government to patch and fix them, not close them forever. These ferries are exactly the same.
Years ago previous governments seemed to lose interest in another New Brunswick institution, the covered bridge. They weren’t being maintained properly and if they burnt down or crumbled, the government was quick to replace them with a modern bridge. Thankfully that attitude has changed now and governments and most New Brunswickers treasure our covered bridge heritage and do what they can to protect them. It would be wrong for this government to toss away our ferry heritage because the boats are too old or too expensive to maintain. That’s so short sighted.
The economic crisis facing our government and all of us is also the reason behind the cuts at CBC Radio and TV. The public broadcaster has a 171 million dollar deficit this year. Many blame the federal government for not coughing up more money for the crown corporation. That may be true but I blame CBC management for the direction these cuts are taking. We still don’t know the exact numbers of jobs that will disappear but in the worst case scenario it will dramatically change CBC Radio service in New Brunswick’s two largest cities. Both Saint John and Moncton could lose up to half of their radio staff. These are the producers and journalists who make the local programs listeners have depended on for years. CBC Radio in Saint John just celebrated its 30th anniversary in the city. If the station loses between 4 and 8 of its radio staff, it’ll be the end of the kind of CBC Radio listeners have known since the 1970s. This is personal for me too because I worked there for many years and I know all the people who may be affected.
If the CBC goes ahead with its plan to change Saint John and Moncton from small stations to bureaus, the local programming will be a far cry from what it’s been. And even when the economy improves and CBC regains its funding, the cuts to these services will never be restored. Once they’re gone, they’re gone for good. Saint John and Moncton will forever be mere bureaus to Fredericton and Halifax where much of the ‘local’ programming will originate. I fear this is a misguided CBC decision to eliminate small station status to cities like Saint John, Moncton, Sydney, Sudbury and Thunder Bay. In my mind, like cutting the ferries, this is short sighted and just wrong.
Without ferry service these river communities will become just a shadow of their former selves. And without the reporters and journalists, the ability to tell our own local stories will be greatly diminished. In a province where one company owns most of the newspapers and where private radio and television broadcasters are also cutting back and struggling to produce local content, weakening the independent voice of the CBC would be a loss and a shame.
