ICBC balanced Liberals’ budget

Dear editor: ICBC is suffering from a bad case of rape and pillage, which could explain much of the dissatisfaction by British Columbians regarding the worrying fear of large insurance rate increases.

Former premier Christy Clark and finance minister Mike de Jong between them interfered with ICBC, a Crown corporation, and helped themselves to hundreds of millions of dollars which were likely the “cushion” every insurance company has.

This “gift” allowed the former BC Liberal government, in part, to declare a “balanced budget”.

They knew exactly what the whole situation was before the May election, but chose to do nothing about it.

Christy Clark could then boast of no new taxes, conveniently forgetting about increasing auto insurance costs.

Not only did this siphoning of money from ICBC occur, but BC Hydro, the once-proud public utility, was also on the hook for some transfer funding as well as being mandated to buy power from the run-of-river private producers at a price that would enable the private companies a profit.

It was a case of forced “buy-high, sell-low” as the market price was less than the purchase. Not good business tactic; the people of B.C. were then subjected to increased electric rates.

So much for W.A.C Bennett’s proud statement when he amalgamated BC Electric and the BC Power Commission to form BC Hydro that British Columbians would have the cheapest electricity costs anywhere.

But W.A.C was working for the people of B.C., not for private investors, unlike the Campbell and Clark Liberal governments.

I hope we have seen an end to government interfering with publicly held utilities. Given competent, honest management and no slight-of-hand deceitful money transfer, Crown corporations such as ICBC and BC Hydro could be of immense value to the people of B.C. Sheila White Summerland