Looks like a "trial balloon" to me. There wasn't much meat to the story. Just someone who has a great idea but they don't even own the land and the land owner was un avialable at press time. Not sure why it even merits a front page placement as it is all a dream until someone puts up the money.
I am not sure it would work well because of weather. There is currently one commuter ferry in this region and it does get cancelled from time to time because of weather and it runs in much more sheltered waters in Esquimalt Harbour.
The commuter ferry would have to have better than 99.5% certainty, ie no more than one day a year lost and ideally only every other year. I suspect this route would suffer cancellations once a month in the winter months and this would discourage a lot of users.
Also, if it is not part of BC Transit the cost would be too high for people to want to use it.
Thinking of that, imagine if BC Transit operated a small ferry service from the Tillicum bridge all the way out to Shoal point with stops in between. I think there would be demand for it. They could do it in partnership with the Harbour Ferries