Liberals point fingers on ICBC report
SCRUBBED: Stone says he never saw recommendations, while de Jong says he did and defended deletion
VICTORIA — A leaked report into the Insurance Corp. of B.C.’s financial woes — scrubbed by the former Liberal government to stop controversial recommendations from becoming public — has triggered a fresh round of finger-pointing among B.C. Liberals.
Former transportation minister Todd Stone said in an interview he doesn’t remember the 2014 report, despite the fact ICBC reported to his ministry and the report was commissioned by his ministry and the Ministry of Finance.
Former finance minister Mike de Jong said the report was altered to remove recommendations to cap minor injury claims because the government of the day wasn’t interested in such a policy change. And ICBC’s former board chair, who resigned just before the report was commissioned, has emerged to blast Stone for what he characterized as mismanagement of the Crown corporation.
Both Stone and de Jong are vying for the leadership of the B.C. Liberals.
The messy fallout centres on a draft 2014 report by consultant Ernst & Young, obtained by Postmedia News, that contained seven pages outlining what it called “bold” moves government could take to save ICBC money. The recommendations included limits on lawsuits for minor soft tissue injuries, increased premiums for drivers who repeatedly demonstrate highrisk behaviour like distracted driving and changes to the ICBC capital structure that had allowed government to siphon off millions in excess profits.
The pages were deleted before the report was made public in March 2015. The recommendations have resurfaced now that ICBC is facing a financial crisis, with questions about whether the Liberal government in 2014 could have staved off steep rate hikes by acting upon, rather than concealing, the report’s conclusions.
“I don’t recall ever having a draft report brought to me,” Stone said. “Certainly, I don’t have any understanding of anything being removed.”
De Jong, however, did. He said the recommendations were removed because government decided not to pursue partial caps or limits on the ability of B.C. drivers to sue for injury claims, which it considered an offshoot of no-fault insurance.
“At a certain point, whether it was respect to this report or another one or a general conversation about ICBC, there’s no question the issue of no-fault arose as you would expect but the response from the government was we’re not prepared to consider that, so don’t,” he said.
“There’s no point in presenting it as an option in any kind of final recommendations because government can tell you now we are not prepared to go to a no-fault regime.”
Stone was at a loss to explain how a 2014 report that his ministry commissioned could end up being completed without him seeing it, and then changed without his knowledge. He instead pointed the finger at the ICBC board.
“I think the board of the day, and Paul Taylor was the chair, you’d have to ask him that question,” he said.
Taylor resigned as board chair in December 2013, before the report was commissioned. He said in an interview Thursday that Stone’s version of events on the report “just doesn’t ring true to me,” and added he disliked Stone’s leadership style as minister and felt he was not a good manager of ICBC.
“Frankly, I quit as chair because of him,” said Taylor, who was also former premier Gordon Campbell’s chief of staff and has endorsed Andrew Wilkinson in the Liberal leadership race.
“I just found him a hard guy to work with. This whole stuff about him trying to point the blame for problems at the corporation for a report that his own department commissioned and, knowing him, would have been on his desk and he wouldn’t have liked some of the stuff in that and asked that it be changed — that’s exactly the kind of stuff I saw when I decided to resign. I found him that kind of guy.”
ICBC has said in a statement it did not commission the report and received only the edited final March version from the Liberal government.
“I don’t recall ever having a draft report brought to me. Certainly, I don’t have any understanding of anything being removed.” — Todd Stone