Liberals attack NDP over ICBC following report leak

[Sheba]

Ah the joys of inheriting someone else's mess..

The fingerpointing is underway in earnest after a leaked report warned B.C. motorists will get hit with auto insurance rate hikes of almost 30 per cent in the next two years if the government doesn’t massively overhaul ICBC’s basic insurance system.

The 203-page report by Ernst & Young says drastic measures are needed that could include capping payouts for pain and suffering for minor injuries, re-introducing photo radar, changing red-light cameras so they also catch speeders, boosting police efforts to catch distracted and impaired drivers, and making high-risk drivers pay more for insurance.

The report was commissioned by ICBC’s board earlier this year while the Liberal government was in power, but was not made public.

The new NDP government, sworn in Tuesday, inherits the ICBC mess.

“The report is a damning indictment of the B.C. Liberals management of ICBC over the last 16 years,” Attorney General David Eby, whose portfolio includes ICBC, said in a statement on Friday. “They’ve left a real mess for us to fix.”

...

The Ernst & Young report paints a bleak picture of finances at the Insurance Corp. of B.C., saying the Crown auto insurer, which has a monopoly on basic coverage, is facing unsustainable financial pressures and requires immediate intervention by the provincial government.

“B.C.’s auto insurance system is facing unprecedented challenges,” it said.

The report was commissioned by ICBC’s board earlier this year, but was not made public. A copy was leaked to Postmedia News.

While ICBC premiums are among the highest in Canada, the report said, “they are not high enough to cover the true cost of paying claims.”

...

In recent years, ICBC had been boxed into a corner by the Liberals. There were politically motivated rate caps at the same time as the number of claims and injury costs soared and earnings from the optional side of its insurance business, which have been used to keep basic rates artificially low, dwindled.