By Tom Mark

NDP Term ICBC A Financial Dumpster Fire

Jan 29, 2018 | 12:54 PM

BC’s Attorney-General is blaming former Liberal governments for putting ICBC deep in the red.

ICBC says its net loss over the first 9 months of its fiscal year is 935 million dollars.

David Eby says the Liberals hid the truth after hearing from independent consultants about the losses and recommendations on how to handle them.

He calls it a financial dumpster fire.

“Not only did they reject these recommendations, it seems they scrubbed those recommendations and warnings from a report presented to the public. They knew the dumpster was on fire but they pushed it behind the building instead of trying to put the fire out.”

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He says it would take a 400 dollar premium hike just to get ICBC to break even.

“We will be announcing major reforms within the coming weeks to make ICBC financially stable again. We are preparing significant initiatives for introduction in the spring legislature session that will keep rates affordable and see high risk drivers pay more while low risk drivers pay less.”

Eby can’t say yet how premiums will be affected.

He says Liberals took one billion dollars out of the corporation and knew all along what was happening.

“British Columbians were not told the truth about the state of ICBC. They were told the problem was not serious, a loss about a hundred times less than was actually the case. Now British Columbians are facing the full consequence of the previous government’s decision to bury the truth.”

Eby says the government could put a billion dollars into ICBC this year, but would also have to put a billion in next year and the year following and more and more money that should be going to schools and hospitals would be going into propping up a broken automotive insurance system.

He says there’s no quick fix, but the fix will come

“For future initiatives that we’re looking at, very seriously, are things like caps on minor injuries, the potential for deductibles and other reforms to the basic insurance product to insure that is sustainable going forward, not just in terms of ICBC’s finances but in terms of the rates drivers have to pay.”

Eby says a full analysis has to be done to see where rates will be this year.

He says he’s asked Price Waterhouse Cooper to review ICBC’s operations and make recommendations.

“Certainly when we’re talking about deductibles and caps on minor injuries, those are major items but even those things alone won’t be sufficient to get ICBC back on financial footing. There are other initiatives that we’re looking at related to auto body repair, management of vendors within ICBC.”

Eby says he hopes to be able to release the Price Waterhouse report in a couple of weeks.

He adds he does expect the ICBC debt will play a role in how Finance Minister Carol James will put together her new budget in the coming weeks.

by Tom Mark