The British Columbia Conservatives plan to repeal the province’s no-fault auto insurance system, in a major policy proposal revealed by a leaked letter from the party’s interim leader to lawyers and insurance executives.
Lorne Doerkson says in the letter that if elected on Oct. 24, the Conservatives would bring in legislation to restore accident victims’ rights to sue, under a new “hybrid system” designed to keep rates affordable while protecting people hurt by reckless drivers.
Doerkson has told reporters that the policy is needed to allow people with serious injuries to be properly compensated to manage their post-accident lives.
The NDP government introduced the no-fault insurance system in 2021, that generally prevents car accident victims from suing, in response to what NDP Leader David Eby called a “financial dumpster fire” at ICBC with losses in the billions.
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Eby now says the letter leaked by the union representing ICBC workers amounts to a “secret deal” between Conservatives and trial lawyers.
But Doerkson says no-fault insurance has been “very challenging” for the residents for multiple reasons.
“Obviously we have to provide affordable insurance coverage for all of our residents, but for those that have experienced catastrophic injury and potentially life-altering injury, this program has not supported them well,” he said at an unrelated news conference in Vancouver.
“And in so many cases, we need to improve that and we absolutely have to contemplate this insurance model.”
Doerkson said he had made “no promises” about the plan.
But in the Sept. 29 letter to the vice-president of the Insurance Bureau of Canada, and the presidents of the Law Society of B.C., the Trial Lawyers Association of B.C., and the Canadian Bar Association, he says new legislation would be passed within a year of the Conservatives being elected.
“Accident victims will get back their right to recover for their serious injuries, and government will get out of the legal profession’s business.” he says.
He says B.C. can look to Ontario, Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I., and Newfoundland and Labrador, which “all have hybrid insurance models.
“We can learn from them and do better,” he adds.
The NDP says trial lawyers have been lobbying to end the no-fault system “that lowered car insurance rates for drivers and has kept them frozen for seven years.”
It describes the Trial Lawyers Association as “the organization representing personal injury lawyers who previously worked on ICBC cases.”
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