MIKE SMYTH: Drivers can handle the truth on looming ICBC rate hikes
Notion of denying insurance for luxury cars a case of government misdirection
As soon as the B.C. government was forced to reveal possible ICBC rate hikes of up to 42 per cent over the next five years, it was time for them to reveal something else: A sleek, shiny, turbo-charged distraction.
The government’s message: Pay no attention to that humongous rate hike bearing down on your wallet like a runaway eighteen-wheeler, B.C. drivers! We’re bringing the hammer down on wannabe James Bonds tearing around in Lamborghinis and Maseratis.
I’ll explain in a minute why you should not fall for the government’s misdirection on sports-car-driving playboys. Let’s talk about how much you could be paying to drive your own car first.
The jaw-dropping, 42-per-cent rate hike was contained in ICBC premium projections the public auto-insurer wanted to keep secret, but was forced to disclose Wednesday by the B.C. Utilities Commission.
With an election approaching in the spring, the last thing the government wanted to tell voters was the truth: Five more years of pain for B.C. drivers who have already had premiums rise more than 37 per cent since 2011.
You can bet the government considered muzzling the nosy utilities commission with a cabinet order that would have kept the possible rate-hike shocker a secret.
(Remember that scene in the movies where Jack Nicholson told Tom Cruise: “You can’t handle the truth?” It would have been something like that.)
But that would have been such an obvious insult to voters’ collective intelligence that the government decided they could not keep the potential rate hike a secret.
Why could ICBC rates go up so high and so fast? Because the accident rate is up, fraudulent claims are up, court-ordered awards are up, high-tech cars are more expensive to repair and a weak Canadian dollar makes American-made auto parts more pricey to buy.
Still, a compounded 42-per-cent rate hike is an unwelcome pre-election talking point for the governing Liberals. (On a yearly basis, the projection is a 4.9-per-cent increase this year, 6.4 per cent in 2017, 7.9 per cent in 2018, 9.4 per cent in 2019 and 7.9 per cent in 2020.)
So Transportation Minister Todd Stone insisted Wednesday the potential rate hikes are “an extreme, worst-case, hypothetical situation.”
“We are not going to allow a scenario that would provide for that level of basic rate increases to actually happen.”
He said the government will crack down on fraud and distracted driving to keep rate hikes lower.
Then he wheeled out that big distraction I mentioned earlier.
Stone announced ICBC will refuse to insure high-end luxury vehicles valued at over $150,000. He said these rare, exotic cars are six times more expensive to repair than normal vehicles.
Legislation will be passed to force the owners of these exotic cars to get private insurance. In the meantime, Stone said, ICBC will double their existing premiums.
Drivers, please don’t fall for this obvious distraction from the looming ICBC rate hikes on your own vehicle.
For one thing, there are only 3,000 of these exotic cars on the road. If you think refusing to insure fewer than one-tenth of one per cent of the 3.1 million vehicles in B.C. will make any significant difference to your own ICBC bill, then I have a slightly used Yugo I’d like to sell you.
Here’s a friendly suggestion to Stone: If these cars really are six times more expensive to repair than normal cars, ICBC should be more than just doubling their premiums. It should be a lot more.
And minister: Please stop using ICBC like a heavily lactating cash cow. The government practice of extracting ‘dividends’ from ICBC — more than $1 billion siphoned in recent years — should be stopped right now, forever, before we pay a penny more.