Province columnist Mike Smyth, who has absolutely tortured BC Ferries executives over the past few months with a blisteringly brilliant series of columns on waste at the quasi-crown corporation, has another one today on all the people BC Ferries allows to ride for free:

B.C. Ferries currently allows its 4,500 employees to ride for free — but the freebies go well beyond the current company payroll.

Former employees with at least 10 years' service with the company receive free ferry rides for the rest of their lives.

B.C. Ferries has also issued "family and spousal passes" to its employees and has even given out free passes to B.C. Ferries contractors.

What about MLAs, you ask? Free ferry passes for MLAs were phased out in 1997, but there are still "former politicians" who hold lifetime ferry passes, a B.C. Ferries official told me.

So let's cut to the bottom line: How many people are riding the ferries for free and what is the total dollar value of all those free trips? Perhaps not surprisingly, B.C. Ferries says that information is "not available." But shouldn't they have the numbers right at their fingertips? As B.C. Ferries underwent its cost-containment strategy, you'd think one of the first things they'd review was the number of free rides they're doling out. And the number of B.C. Ferries freeloaders is clearly in the thousands and the value of the free rides is in the millions.

Back in November 2010, this newspaper reported that B.C. Ferries had issued more than 7,400 free passes to its employees, their spouses and their families.

The value of free trips at that time, as disclosed by B.C. Ferries: $5,150,163.

That's right: more than $5 million in free rides.

That was three years ago. No wonder B.C. Ferries doesn't want to reveal what the damage is today, in the wake of some of the deepest service reductions and rate hikes ever inflicted on the public.

This gets even worse. Waaaaaay back in 2002, then-CTF B.C. Director Mark Milke issued this news release:

The BC division of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) today revealed that BC Ferries employees were given 62,000 free vehicle rides last year on the ferry system. BC Ferries reports that these were trips for personal travel, travel for which other riders would have to pay full fare. The information was obtained via a Freedom of Information request.

"If you're a paying customer waiting in a line-up at ferry terminals this long weekend, chances are you're also waiting with ferry employees who travel for free," said CTF-BC director Mark Milke. "On average, 170 employee vehicles board taxpayer-subsidized boats every day on personal time and free of charge."

To illustrate the free usage, the free rides given to employees with their vehicles would fill 132 Spirit-class ferries, or about four days worth of full sailings between Swartz Bay and Tsawwassen in the summertime. 

Apparently, BC Ferries never learns. I’ll let Smitty explain the hypocrisy to them:

Amazingly, BC Ferries president Michael Corrigan says giving out freebies is really no big deal since the boats are running half-full anyway. "There is no cost to provide the personal passes to our employees," he said.

By that logic, there would be "no cost" to continue letting senior citizens travel free from Monday to Thursday, either. But senior citizens are now seeing that discount — in place for 37 years — chopped in half.

It's disgusting that B.C. seniors are being kicked in the teeth, while B.C. Ferries kisses off millions of dollars in revenue to let thousands of insiders and their families ride the ferries for free.