Perhaps tiring of these incessant visits, in November 2024 then-finance minister Nate Horner (now thankfully riding the backbenches) announced plans (ridiculously dubbed "Care-First") to raise auto insurance rates and rip away the rights of Albertans to seek injury compensation from negligent drivers' insurers. After all, if Nanny State Nate's Finance department were to force under penalty of law Alberta motorists to purchase from private, profit-driven corporations no-fault policies that forbid them from filing liabilty claims against at-fault drivers' insurance companies, what more could the avaricious auto insurance industry possibly want?

However, Alberta Finance is under new management, led by Finance Minister Jason Nixon, his new Chief of Staff, a new Deputy Minister, and a new Superintendent of Insurance, all appointed to these posts this year, after Nate's no-fault nonsense (which slashes compensation for innocent victims to increase benefits for reckless drivers) was overwhelmingly rejected by UCP members at the party's AGM late last year. These new bosses (hopefully not the same as the old bosses) have asked victims' rights advocates to help the Finance department carve out (of Horner’s odious "Care-First" scheme) tort rights for Albertans with motor vehicle accident (MVA) injuries more serious than those currently capped under the Minor Injury Regulation.

Last month, both the Alberta Civil Trial Lawyers Association and the Canadian Bar Association submitted proposals to Alberta's Treasury Board and Finance (TBF) department, recommending that if the government is hell-bent on implementing its unjust, unnecessary, unconservative, unAlbertan no-fault scheme next year, it should at least preserve the fundamental tort rights of innocent Albertans permanently injured by reckless drivers. ACTLA advises that eliminating the traditional civil legal rights of innocent Alberta auto accident victims with non-permanent injuries (about 90% of claims) would reduce the average Albertan's auto insurance rates by about $200 per year, a figure confirmed by the Insurance Bureau of Canada in the proposal IBC made back when Nate Horner was finance minister.

While obliterating 90% of auto accident injury claims would be a drastic haircut for injury lawyers such as myself, insurers, and brokers could use a little off the top as well. Replacing the 6% insurer underwriting profit provision with a 75% auto loss ratio target, and moving Alberta's bloated brokerage commissions ($265 per policy) closer to the levels of those in Manitoba ($66 per policy) and Saskatchewan ($67 per policy) — see page 3 of this Oliver Wyman actuarial report — would significantly reduce rates for policyholders without revictimizing innocent injured Albertans (mostly women and children) already victimized by at-fault motorists.

Krahnicle’s Cartoon: January 10, 2021

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