ICBC officials spent years pushing 'goofy' ideas: former minister
Credit to Author: Rob Shaw| Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2019 00:44:41 +0000
VICTORIA — The embattled Liberal who used to be responsible for the Insurance Corp. of B.C. says he spent years shooting down “goofy” reforms pitched by the corporation, and that NDP Attorney General David Eby is a “sucker” for falling for half-baked changes that have led to skyrocketing premiums for many drivers.
Todd Stone, the minister in charge of ICBC before the 2017 election, said he nixed included implementing no-fault insurance, suspending driver’s licences for people who received just one routine traffic ticket, selling the corporation’s North Vancouver headquarters for $40 million and selling ICBC’s website for $10 million to a state-owned Chinese bank accused of money-laundering.
But, for his part, Eby warned Thursday the province may have to pivot to no-fault insurance, a model where most, if not all, automobile accident cases would be settled without any access to court. It is used in a handful of provinces.
Eby said no-fault is not his preference, but if ICBC continues to have its reforms overturned by court challenges from the B.C. Trial Lawyers Association, he’ll have to reconsider that to get the $1 billion in savings annually needed at ICBC.
“I’ve told the trial lawyers very clearly that in going after these reforms, they need to be careful what they wish for,” said Eby. “Because, there won’t be many options left for government after that.”
Stone said senior ICBC officials recommended to him several times the same rate redesign Eby recently implemented. That set premiums based on risk and has resulted in young and inexperienced drivers facing large increases to their premiums.
“ICBC is known for coming up with lots of goofy stuff, and I’m sure David Eby is finding the same thing I did, that you’ve got to be right on top of the corporation because they are coming up with crafty schemes all the time, like the driver risk model,” said Stone.
“And, you know, that’s why we have ministers responsible. Unfortunately, in the case of the driver risk model, David Eby he was a sucker and he fell for it hook line and sinker.”
Eby has blamed Stone and the previous Liberal government for siphoning billions out of ICBC to balance budgets while neglecting the Crown auto agency until it began hemorrhaging money. ICBC lost almost $2.5 billion in the past two years due to rising claims and legal costs.
Stone sat silently in the legislature last week as Eby taunted him for his mismanagement, but emerged Thursday to say he needed to defend his reputation.
Eby scoffed at Stone’s explanations and reiterated that the blame for ICBC’s mismanagement and subsequent rate increases falls squarely on Stone’s shoulders.
“Well there’s two possibilities,” said Eby.
“One is that essentially he was wearing those glasses with eyes painted on them to look like he was awake during meetings and he literally had no idea what was happening in the corporation — he didn’t know that they booked the sale of the URL, he didn’t know that they booked the sale of the headquarters, he didn’t know that (former finance minister) Mike de Jong was tearing pages out of reports, he was just sort of Weekend at Bernie’s managing the corporation and being positioned in the chairs around the boardroom table as the days went on.
“The alternative is that he knew exactly what was happening. He’s being totally disingenuous about his involvement in it.”
Stone said ICBC pitched dozens of options to him, as it sought to implement the Liberal cabinet directive to keep insurance rates as low as possible.
“One was significantly increasing the penalty points in fines and suspending licences after one traffic violation,” said Stone. “Secondly, they were they were relentless, as they had been for decades, that ICBC tried to convince us to do no-fault. We exercised our discretion as the cabinet of the day and said no to all of that stuff.”