Top Canadian officials are quietly supporting efforts to restore ferry service between Ketchikan and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and have given local leaders there permission to work behind the scenes to solve the policy issues that stalled progress for the past three years, the mayor of Prince Rupert said on Tuesday.

BC Mayor Herb Pond spoke during a Southeast Conference “transportation spotlight” at the Harrigan Centennial Hall in Sitka.

For decades, Prince Rupert and Ketchikan enjoyed a close relationship fostered by the Alaska Marine Highway System, which transported thousands of people between Alaska and the small Canadian port city each year. But the AMHS last ran a sailing to Prince Rupert in 2022, and last had regular service there in 2019.

Much of that severance is to do with the complex nature of managing and maintaining an internationally shared port. The existing AMHS terminal in Prince Rupert is in disrepair, and though U.S. funding is available to renovate it, one condition to use that money — building most of the project with American supplies — is incompatible with a similar Canadian law, unless one or both countries agree to waive their rules.

And because the six-hour sailing to Prince Rupert is an international trip, the vessel and its design need to comply with international Safety of Life at Sea requirements unless both countries internally approve waiver (The AMHS sailing between Ketchikan and Bellingham, Washington,  is far longer but does not stop in a Canadian port and does not require SOLAS certifications).

The three-year standstill on the project has become so pronounced that Alaska Department of Transportation staff have expressed a willingness to consider constructing an entirely new ferry terminal in Hyder, Alaska, a town of less than a hundred people that abuts Canada and is connected to the North American road system, rather than improve the existing facility.

Still, with extensive work needed to either refurbish the Prince Rupert terminal or to construct a new terminal in Hyder, service connecting to nearby mainland communities is at least six years away, AMHS staff told the Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board last fall.

Canadian officials have been aware of the impasse on the project, but local efforts to push the issue have finally attracted the attention of the premier of British Columbia, David Eby, Mayor Pond said Tuesday.

Eby, who is for the province roughly analogous to a U.S. governor, “himself is interested in this file and … [has] given [us] permission to work behind the scenes, if you will, to see what we can pull together between the two governments,” Pond said.

Other high-ranking officials are aware of the project’s lingering problems, too. Pond in a Friday phone interview said that he and other Prince Rupert government officials have “a number of times” raised the stalled progress on the project to the country’s minister of transportation, who is a member of the prime minister’s cabinet.

Hours before Pond spoke in Sitka on Tuesday, Chrystia Freeland resigned as Canada’s Transportation Minister; she has been replaced by Steven MacKinnon.

Pond in a message on Friday said he doesn’t expect that shake-up to diminish interest from administrators.

Canadian leaders have been reluctant to publicly back international cooperation on the terminal  because of ongoing antagonism between the two countries, Pond explained on Tuesday, alluding to President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. invade Canada and claim it as a state, and the  tariffs that he has levied on the country that have sparked an ongoing trade war.

“Because of the wonderful political situation between our countries, the senior politicians don’t want to be public about it,” Pond told the audience. “It doesn’t carry very well in Canada.”

Pond said that he and other Prince Rupert representatives have been considering yet another way to reconnect the two cities — by sharing the existing BC Ferries terminal in Prince Rupert with AMHS ferries.

“It would take some investment to do it, but it could work out to be fiscally advantageous to both BC Ferries and to the Alaska Marine Highway System if … it’s feasible, right?” said Pond.

BC Ferries operates ferries that serve communities along coastal British Columbia as far south as Port Hardy, on the northern tip of Vancouver Island. It is an independently managed but publicly owned corporation, “so we’re kind of finding our way through that bureaucracy,” Pond said. “But we have some support from the minister (of transportation).”

This story was originally published by the Ketchikan Daily News.