Fish packers wary of deadline on Digby ferry

Fishermen and fish plant owners from southwest Nova Scotia are going home empty-handed after lobbying government officials to save ferry service in the Bay of Fundy.

The delegation travelled to Halifax Friday to try to secure a commitment that the service would continue beyond the beginning of next year.

Time is running out, said Denny Morrow, with the Nova Scotia Fish Packers Association.

"If you run a private-sector business where you export and you have to make your marketing contracts, you have to do your work with motor coaches for the tourism business, you're thinking two or three years ahead," he said after the meeting.

Bay Ferries Ltd. threatened to end the ferry run between Digby, N.S., and Saint John, N.B., in October 2006 because of declining traffic and high fuel costs.

The governments of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick responded by contributing $2 million each, while the federal government put in $4 million. The deal ensures ferry service until the end of January 2009.

Nova Scotia MP Peter MacKay, the minister responsible forthe Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, helped broker that deal. He's not committing to anything now, but said Ottawa would not rescue the ferry service alone.

"We're prepared to do our part,"MacKay saidearlier Friday,"but it is going to take all levels of government and communities on both sides of the bay coming together to make this ferry service continue."

Morrow finds that frustrating.

"When we're talking to the federal government we're told, 'get the provincial governments onside.' When we're talking to the provincial governments we're told, 'get the federal government onside,'" Morrow said.

He said seafood companies are doing their part to keep the Princess of Acadia runningby shipping $250 million worth of lobster and fish,$70 millionjust at Christmasalone.