MCCOURT: New Finance Minister Nixon must scrap Horner’s no-fault auto insurance scheme

Mark McCourt is the founder of McCourt Law Offices in Edmonton.Last month, I wrote that Premier Danielle Smith should fire Nate Horner from the Finance Ministry, for reasons I outline in this guest column. With Horner's resignation from cabinet, new Finance Minister Jason Nixon (as Derek Fildebrandt recently predicted) has an opportunity to take a fresh look at the auto insurance reform file. Shortly after leading the UCP to victory over the NDP in the May 2023 Alberta election, Premier Smith appointed Nate Horner as Finance Minister and directed him to see about making automobile insurance more affordable. Notably, the average Alberta motorist’s auto insurance premium at the time was $1636 per year. Horner took his sweet time pondering the issue, looking favourably at the BC NDP’s decision in May 2021 to switch from an at-fault (tort law) insurance system to a no-fault insurance scheme. This was strange, because unlike socialists, most Albertans favour conservative concepts, including personal responsibility and moral blameworthiness. As I indicated in a Western Standard guest column last November, Albertans in poll after poll have spoken loud and clear, strongly supporting the rights of innocent injured car crash victims to receive full and fair compensation from careless drivers’ insurance companies for pain and suffering, income loss, medical expenses and other damages. No-fault insurance schemes rip away those fundamental rights. In flagrant disregard of the views of most Albertans, Horner held a press conference in November 2024 announcing his intention to bring no-fault auto insurance to Alberta starting in 2027. In May of last year, Horner rammed through legislation to facilitate the switch to his left-leaning no-fault scheme. .Horner advised that he modelled his plan largely on the Manitoba NDP’s no-fault auto insurance scheme. He predicted the scheme could save the average Alberta policyholder nearly $400 per year. However, an actuarial report released a couple of months ago by the Automobile Insurance Rate Board reveals that the average Albertan’s auto insurance premium next year under Nate’s no-fault scheme is expected to be $2027 per year — nearly $400 per year more than the average premium was when Premier Smith tasked Horner with making rates more affordable.Nate Horner’s unAlbertan, unconservative, no-fault plan is disastrous. Former Alberta Conservative Justice Minister Jonathan Denis called Nate’s no-fault law “one of the worst pieces of legislation I’ve ever seen.” At the most recent UCP AGM, party members voted overwhelmingly to repeal Horner’s leftist no-fault legislation. Coupled with the fact that earlier this year, Horner delivered what one left-wing commentator astutely described as “an NDP budget”, it was high time for Nate to depart from cabinet.Finance Minister Nixon has ample time to apply common-sense conservative values to the auto insurance issue before an expected general election next year. In a Western Standard guest column earlier this year, I made several recommendations on how the UCP government could reduce rates for good Alberta motorists while keeping intact the traditional civil legal rights of innocent injured auto accident victims to be compensated by multinational, multibillion-dollar corporations that insure reckless drivers.Action items for the government to consider include modifying the grid framework so as to stop making good drivers over-subsidize the rates of bad ones, repealing the Direct Compensation Property Damage scheme, reducing compulsory "care-first" Section B benefits and allowing insurers to sell optional excess Section B benefits, eliminating prejudgment interest on general damages, removing the insurance premium tax, reducing the health-cost recovery levy, slashing bloated insurance broker commissions, de-indexing the minor injury cap and reducing the amount of the cap by over 20% to $5,000, and requiring those who wish to receive capped compensation for injuries captured by the Minor Injury Regulation (which comprises 80% of claims) to purchase that coverage from their own auto insurers (thus relieving negligent drivers’ insurers of that particular compensatory responsibility).Mark McCourt is the founder of McCourt Law Offices in Edmonton.

MCCOURT: New Finance Minister Nixon must scrap Horner’s no-fault auto insurance scheme

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