The Transportation Safety Board of Canada recommended Tuesday that all large ferries carry lists of all passengers on board in a bid to prevent tragedies like the death of two people during the 2006 sinking of the Queen of the North in B.C.
In a "watchlist" of nine critical safety issues, the TSB pointed to "safety deficiencies" in emergency training and procedures on ferries -- deficiencies identified during investigations of ferry disasters, including the Queen of the North.
The TSB recommended that large ferries like those that ply the waters between Vancouver Island and the mainland carry detailed lists of all passengers, and that crew members be trained in emergency crowd control.
"When people are faced with an emergency, the response of those who have received training and practice is more automatic and requires less interpretation and decision making," the board said in its recommendations.
BC Ferries CEO David Hahn told CTV News that it would be "impractical" to introduce passenger lists for ferries on southern coastal routes.
"People would have to arrive two or three hours ahead of time," he said.
"I think it would kill the Island, quite frankly. Tourism would suffer. Movement of goods and services would be awful. It's a very impractical recommendation."
However, Hahn said that BC Ferries has implemented specialized crowd control training for employees.
Among the other persistent safety issues identified by the TSB in its watchlist were frequent collisions at railway crossings and runway overruns by passenger jets.
