Campobello Island residents will have ferry service throughout the winter months again this year, according to the province’s transportation minister.
The announcement comes as COVID-19 cases in New Brunswick and the neighbouring state of Maine have spiked over the past few weeks.
“Things are ever-changing with COVID, unfortunately, and with Omicron arriving in New Brunswick and the uncertainty around that, we’re going to extend the ferry again,” Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Jill Green said Wednesday.
Last month, Green told our newsroom that the ferry would stop operating for the season in late December after restrictions at the Canada-U.S. border were loosened.
As of Nov. 30, fully-vaccinated Canadians are no longer required to have a negative PCR test to re-enter Canada if they have been gone less than 72 hours.
“We thought that it would be possible that there would be some hiccups when that happens, so we decided to extend the ferry for one more month,” Green said at the time.
But the COVID-19 situation has worsened in both New Brunswick and Maine since then. New Brunswick hit a record number of active cases on Wednesday while Maine reported a record number of hospitalizations from the virus.
Because of that, Green said the ferry service will now be extended until May 31, when regular-season service is scheduled to resume.
Residents of Campobello Island are forced to travel through Maine in order to reach mainland New Brunswick when the ferry is not operating.
The Campobello ferry typically runs from June through September but has been operating continuously since June of last year due to restrictions on border travel.
When the ferry was extended last year, officials made the decision on a month-to-month basis, but Green said they wanted to provide more certainty to residents this winter.
“It’ll be like it was last year with four times a week [service] but dependent on weather,” she said. “The ferry company will post their schedule on their website and people can go there to get information on when it’s going to be running, when it’s not.”
According to the transportation and infrastructure minister, extending the Campobello Island ferry service costs the government around $60,000 a month.
Green said she has made a commitment to talk to the federal infrastructure and transportation ministers about a year-round ferry service for Campobello, but no talks have been scheduled at this point.
