The latest edition of the Cat ferry between Nova Scotia and Maine docked in Portland for the first time today. Governments in both countries are hoping for its success, though it has also become a target in Nova Scotia politics.
On a beautiful waterfront day Jen Pitfield and her son Jack stopped their SUV at the customs gate in Portland, in a state of high anticipation for the five-hour hydroplane to Yarmouth.
“We took the Nova Star last year which was just a wonderful experience, but this is a cat and it looks super cool,” Pitfield says.
The Atlanta residents were on their way to see relatives in Nova Scotia. The ferry arrived soon after they did, nearly on time, met by a tugboat that shot a fire-hose stream of water skyward in greeting.
“There’s an enormous amount riding on the success of this boat for that government,” says Canadian traveler George Oliver, who was also preparing to board.
As Oliver waited, he said the $107 one-way ticket seemed fairly priced. But he also noted that Nova Scotia taxpayers are subsidizing the services to the tune of tens of millions of Canadian dollars a year.
Oliver says it’s also a source of political tension. He says that Yarmouth’s economy suffered in 2009, when a previous version of the CAT service ended. In 2011, the Liberal Party’s promise to restore the service helped put it back in power. Opposition conservatives, he says, now will make the most of any seeming stumble by the CAT.
“They think they can make the government weak by criticizing whatever, just keeping it in the news and being negative about it before it’s even had a chance to work,” he says.
“You know in the most recent sitting of our Legislature this was a very big issue and it will continue to be throughout the summer here,” says Jamie Baillie, leader of the opposition in Nova Scotia’s Parliament, adding that he wants to see the ferry succeed. “But it has to be sustainable. And the rich deal that the government here made is not sustainable. And nobody wins, neither Portland nor Yarmouth or our two counties when such a rich and one-sided deal gets signed by an irresponsible government.”
Baillie has been hammering the CAT in the provincial press for failing to promise to publicize its passenger numbers or its cash flow. Bay Ferries vice president Don Cormier, who was on hand for the CAT’s arrival in Portland, says day-to-day numbers, particularly as the service is just starting out, hold little value.
“To come out and publicly say the numbers are X today or Y, is really not what we should be focusing on,” he says. “What we should be focusing on is marketing the product offering, the best product available and not having to debate the merit of running the service in the media. We are publicly accountable. We know that, but we want to focus on the business at hand.”
And even if the CAT’s traffic and finances remain a political friction point in Nova Scotia, there will be one bit of data available: Under Portland’s docking contract with the boat’s operators, the city will receive monthly reports on how many paying passengers and cars the ferry lands and takes from here. And that information, city officials say, is open to the public.