THE RECORD
September 11, 2002

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

Well, let's take a last kick at the insurance racket, before going to other, perhaps more important subjects. The only time we received fair treatment from an insurance company was in 1984 when our daughter's mobile home burned down not far from here. We saw the smoke in the distance and drove to see what was going on? We had no fire department at the time and all the assembled neighbours could do was to stand there and watch it burn. As it turned out, the fire was caused by some aluminum wiring, very popular at one time, overheating and setting fire to one of the walls.

We were still living in three little cabins at the time and some of our handmade oak furniture was stored with our daughter, going up in the flames. We received the full replacement value without any arguments. The company was a branch of ICBC at the time, later sold off by the first great deregulator and privatizer, Bill Vander Zalm, claiming that it wasn't the government's job to be in the insurance business. Neither was it Bill's job to be in the politics business, but that's another story.

It was in the late eighties when all of a sudden anti-ICBC propaganda started to pour out from our TV sets and daily papers. The ads were singing the praise of private car insurance and the beauty of being able to choose which company should receive our doubled premiums. It was getting so bad that I went to see the late Don Sutherland in Williams Lake, who was then the head of some insurance agents association, to find out what was going on.

I knew Don for a long time as a square and honest guy, bought my insurance from him, and knew that he would give me straight answers?

Don told me that Bobbie Scherrell, an American, who was the head of ICBC for a short time, was allegedly given $1 million by the private companies to wreck ICBC. The plan was to try to create public sentiment against the company and force the Vander Zalm government to sell it off. He also told me that ICBC was a thorn in the side of the private companies, as it had the lowest operating costs in North America, and paid out the largest percentage of the premiums to claimants. The premiums were low and the money stayed in BC, instead of going abroad to foreign companies.

As the President of the Association Don led a group to Victoria to tell the government that the agents were very happy with ICBC and didn't want to see the return of private companies. "Now look - said Don - we got it made. All we have to do is write out the policies, collect the money, give the papers to the customers and collect our fees from ICBC. In the private insurance days people who were screwed around by the companies used to come to our offices, swearing at us, calling us names, sometimes even breaking furniture and beating up agents. We would be crazy to ask for that kind of thing again. When somebody now has a complaint against ICBC they can go straight after the company and leave us alone, So why should we want to change this?"

Now, under the Campbell gang we'll see what today's crop of agents, who never had to put up with threats, want? Will they jump on the ideological bandwagon of "business friendly privatization", or use their heads and protect their own and their customers' necks?

To get off the subject of insurance, Keith Baldry was on BCTV the other day explaining that the Campbell gang doesn't want to sell the infrastructure of Hydro, just bring in private companies to build new dams and facilities. What Keith conveniently forgot to mention was that Hydro is planning to sell the distribution services to the Accenture company of Bermuda and that this same company has recently been blacklisted by the California government, now trying to re-regulate the distribution of electricity, for allegedly sleazy business practices. This is the outfit our dear friends in Victoria want to jump into bed with.

If foreign companies come in, build dams and raise fees for their own customers, they'll be able to sue the Canadian government against BC Hydro's lower prices under Chapter 11 of NAFTA and similar WTO rules, claiming that Hydro is subsidized by the taxpayers and it causes them loss of profits. The same reasons given by United Parcel Service for suing Canada Post over the delivery of parcels, hoping to force up prices. The purpose of free trade is to protect multinational profits, regardless who and how many get hurt.

Now we come to the ferry rebuilding contracts the Campbell gang is also desperately trying to send abroad. According to NAFTA and WTO rules once the bids have been sent out, the corporation must accept the lowest bids and from now on no future government can place the orders with exclusively with BC companies, sealing the fate of the shipbuilding industry in this province as long as we are in NAFTA and WTO.
Welcome to the wonderful world of business friendly perpetual war and monetary competition to ensure the survival of the richest!

Copyright (c) 2002, West's International