ICBC, ay yi yi.
Calling the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia’s fiscal situation a “financial dumpster fire,” B.C. Attorney General David Eby told reporters this week that it would take a premiums hike of $400 for each driver in this province for the corporation just to break even. That’s right, $400. To break even.
This horrific news comes just two months after ICBC insurance rates went up 6.4 per cent in November.
So now they’ll tinker, raising deductibles and capping “minor” injury awards.
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We’re reminded of a story, before the Soviet Union collapsed, of a huge ball-bearing factory in Russia that after making the shiny steel balls would ship them by train to a smelter several hundred miles away, where they would be melted down to raw steel that would then be sent back to the point of origin to make more ball bearings, and so on.
Ludicrous. Maybe it’s high time to say “Dasvidaniya” – goodbye – to ICBC’s monopoly and open the auto insurance market to smarter operations. Choice, they say, is good. In this case, it’d be great.
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