SRIVASTAVA: Alberta’s no-fault ‘meat charts’ will value your hand like livestock — whether you're a surgeon or a mechanic

Nick Srivastava is a Partner at Crash Lawyers.At the UCP AGM in November 2025, grassroots members voted overwhelmingly to repeal the upcoming “Care‑First (No-Fault) Insurance Reform”, set to come into effect in January of 2027. Despite the wishes of Albertans – and their own party base – the government continues to push this policy forward and intends to implement it in the next 11 months.With the rollout of the Care First system, the Alberta government plans to fundamentally reshape how Albertans access justice after a collision. The most serious concern is the significant curtailment of a long-standing democratic safeguard – the right to sue a negligent driver. Under Care First, that right becomes extremely narrow, available only in rare and exceptional circumstances.Care First also makes insurers the “gatekeepers of care”. The same insurance responsible for paying benefits will decide when treatments stop, what care is “necessary”, and how serious an injury really is. In a mandatory insurance system, this creates a powerful concentration of authority, raising predictable concerns about fairness, oversight, and the risk of systematic disadvantage for ordinary Albertans.The insurance industry’s claim that the current system “enriches lawyers” ignores a basic truth: lawyers are not beneficiaries of the tort system, injured people are. The “lawyers get rich” narrative also distracts from the real issue – removing lawyers from the process doesn’t remove costs, it removes accountability from the same group promoting this messaging. The system without lawyers is not cheaper; it is simply one where individuals must face insurers alone with no support..Even worse, Care First relies on rigid injury valuations, often called “meat charts.” This one-size-fits-all model ignores human context and strips away the individual justice that courts are designed to provide. Under this approach, the loss of a hand is valued the same for a heart surgeon as it is for a violinist, a hairstylist, a mechanic, or a radio jockey, even though the real-world impact on livelihood, identity, and long-term functioning is completely different.Without meaningful access to courts, Albertans lose the leverage, transparency, and accountability that come from having access to the courts. The result will be a silent transition towards a more dystopian society with a shift of power away from citizens and towards institutions that control both the definition of injury and the limits of recovery. Rather than strengthening protections, Care First deepens the power imbalance by eroding individual recourse in favour of institutional efficiency, leaving injured Albertans with fewer tools to defend their own well-being.Speak now, before silence becomes the new normal and your voice disappears into a system that no longer listens to individuals.Nick Srivastava is a Partner at Crash Lawyers.

SRIVASTAVA: Alberta’s no-fault ‘meat charts’ will value your hand like livestock — whether you're a surgeon or a mechanic

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