LIBERALS’ PLAN TO DELAY ICBC FIX FAILED BIG TIME
The B.C. Liberals provided some telling insights this week in responding to news that their government had suppressed the recommendations of a consultant’s report on the troubled Insurance Corp. of B.C.
The report from consultants Ernst and Young alerted the government to the deteriorating state of finances at the publicly owned auto insurance corporation and came with some strong remedies for what needed to be done forthwith.
Those “bold moves” included reining in the payouts for minor soft-tissue injuries, punitive premiums for those found guilty of distracted driving and other high-risk practices, and an end to the government method of siphoning cash from the ICBC accounts for its own purposes.
A draft with those and other recommendations was delivered to the Christy Clark government on Dec. 23, 2014, the report having been commissioned by the ministries of transportation and finance.
But some seven pages of the more controversial recommendations were stripped out of the final report, before it was passed on to ICBC a few months later.
And that was pretty much the last that was heard of the seven pages until the contents were reported this week by Rob Shaw of The Vancouver Sun. Shaw’s followup report, published Thursday, explained what happened and why.
Confessing to the suppression was B.C. Liberal leadership hopeful Mike de Jong, who received the report in his then-capacity as minister of finance and chair of the Treasury Board committee of cabinet.
As de Jong told it, the government balked at the report’s call for limits on settlements for soft-tissue injuries — branding the recommendation as a “lite” version of no-fault insurance, something the Liberals oppose.
“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.”
De Jong’s candid admission came in marked contrast to the initial response from rival leadership candidate Todd Stone. His bailiwick as transportation minister included responsibility for ICBC. But when contacted about the redacted passages of the report, he professed ignorance.
“I don’t recall ever having a draft report brought to me,” said Stone. “Certainly, I don’t have any understanding of anything being removed.”
Pressed, he was at a loss to explain how a report commissioned by his ministry could end up in a finished version with changes undertaken without his knowledge.
But after asking around overnight, he came up with an explanation, delivered Friday morning on radio station CHNL in his Kamloops hometown.
The report never made it to the transportation ministry in unredacted form, Stone told host Shane Woodford. Rather it was delivered to the Treasury Board in finance and the offending passages stripped out before it was passed on to Stone’s ministry and ICBC.
Even accepting that explanation, it provides a damning insight on the inner workings of the Christy Clark administration.
An outside consultant is hired to review the state of the giant public auto insurance utility. The report comes back with recommendations that could save hundreds of millions of dollars, atop passages like the following:
“These changes alone
■ will not contain claims cost growth to within sustainable levels in the medium to long term, particular with regards to bodily injury claims costs.
“This would require a bold ■ change in policy direction but the results observed in other jurisdictions in terms of claims cost reductions are compelling.”
Instead of treating the report as a wake-up call, the Liberals suppress the recommendations they don’t like, and pass along a censored version to the minister supposedly in charge and the Crown corporation itself.
Less than two years later in late 2016, the same consulting firm is brought back for a second look, this time by ICBC itself. But in a further indictment of the Liberal method of operation, the second report is timed for release after the election, not before.
Not surprisingly, EY reports back with similar recommendations to the 2014 report, coupled with a greater sense of urgency. ICBC’s financial state is now said to be unsustainable and motorists need to brace for insurance hikes of almost 30 per cent in the next two years unless drastic changes were made.
All this is crafted by the B.C. Liberals for delivery after the 2017 election, when any bad medicine could be dispensed well in advance of the end of the next electoral cycle.
Instead, the New Democrats inherit the mess and the job of cleanup.
Meanwhile the Liberals, with de Jong leading the charge, are predicting the new government will at the least have to bring in a “lite version” of no-fault auto insurance.
But when it comes to faultfinding on ICBC’s troubles, the blame belongs with the previous government, which put off the fix for so long that the most severe remedies were unavoidable.
Sad news this week that former ICBC CEO Nick Geer was killed in an automobile accident in California.
Geer, a former Jim Pattison executive, was recruited by premier Gordon Campbell to oversee the tacit privatization of ICBC. Instead he concluded that public auto insurance could and should be saved and presided over a remarkable turnaround.
His reward was to be fired, in what in retrospective became the first of many B.C. Liberal-authored acts of political interference in ICBC.
All this is crafted by the B.C. Liberals for delivery after the 2017 election, when any bad medicine could be dispensed well in advance of the end of the next electoral cycle.