Last week Attorney General David Eby announced with great fanfare that he was “modernizing” ICBC by implementing a new rate structure that would reward safe drivers with discounts and penalize bad drivers with higher rates.
All of this sounds great until you actually read the fine print.
Eby says the current system is broken and ICBC rates should be moved to a “driver-based model” so that at-fault crashes are tied to the driver and not the person who owns the vehicle.
Under the new system, Eby claims that two-thirds of B.C. drivers will pay less “based on today’s rates,” but the new system won’t come into effect more than a year from now starting in September 2019.
Before that happens, ICBC will be making an application to increase rates substantially before the end of 2018.
How much? We don’t yet know, but given the fact that ICBC is losing $3.5 million each day, it will likely swallow-up any savings or discounts the NDP is currently advertising.
The one thing that will hit drivers in rural B.C. the most will be a discount for those who drive fewer than 5,000 kilometres a year.
The theory is the less you drive, the less likely you are to get in an accident. But this completely ignores our way of life in rural B.C. where it is necessary to drive great distances for anything.
In other words, rural drivers will pay a higher rate in order to subsidize an occasional driver who does not use their car to drive to work, go to school or attend medical appointments. How is this more fair?
The fact is ICBC already has much higher rates than other jurisdictions.
If Eby was really serious about fixing ICBC, he should start by restructuring the corporation rather than lay all the blame at the foot of drivers in rural B.C.
Donna Barnett is the Liberal MLA for the Cariboo-Chilcotin.
