Re: “LETTER: Time to end ICBC’s monopoly,” Chilliwack Progress, March 12.
I read this item and remembered how it was, back in the good old days, when we had an “open insurance industry.” I recalled in 1958 my rate going up 30 per cent, and that was with no accidents or tickets! They were the famous seven insurance companies back then. All the monies collected went south of the border with only the amount for claims being returned. Dave Barrett brought in ICBC. Hundreds of millions of dollars were invested with the returns going to keep rates down. This worked well at the time.
Then Bill Bennett ran into trouble balancing the budget. He decided to have Crown Corporations pay a “dividend” to the government. He syphoned off hundreds of millions each from ICBC and BC Hydro to help him ‘balance’ the budget. It worked fine for a while. Rates stayed somewhat reasonable.
Finally we arrived at the Liberals running into real troubles during Christy Clark’s run. They needed much more millions to “balance” their budget. So they plundered ICBC’s finances. The result is, we now have little in the kitty to bring in income to reduce your rates. You are actually paying for the ‘balanced’ budget.
Reference is made to somebody pilfering $400,000 from ICBC. That’s hardly a drop in the bucket compared to what our politicians lifted from ICBC. I would rather have the cash here than south of the border, paying dividends to the U.S. share holders.
Michael O’Cain