Repairing Ontario Auto Insurance: Ending Compulsory No-Fault?
Freedom Party of Ontario Releases Draft Policy for Public Consultation

August 6, 2003 - London, Ontario

The Freedom Party of Ontario is today releasing its draft policy on automobile insurance. Entitled "The Right Direction for Auto Insurance Reform", hard-copies of the draft document are being sent to organizations representing consumers and insurance, health, legal, accounting, and actuarial professionals. The draft can also be obtained from the Freedom Party web site: freedomparty.on.ca/autodraft.htm.

The Freedom Party draft distinguishes itself from the other parties' plans with four key reform proposals:

1. Repealing the failing no-fault system and restoring Ontario's pre-1990, tort-based, wrongdoer-pays system.

The Freedom Party cites the numerous and costly failures of no-fault in the USA, and the number of states that have returned to a tort-based system (including Colorado, which switched back to the tort-based system on July 1, 2003).

2. Repealing the requirement of drivers to purchase liability insurance (first imposed in 1980).

The Freedom Party cites the results of US studies which indicate both lower insurance premiums and lower numbers of uninsured drivers in states that do not force drivers to purchase liability insurance. Drivers could continue the current practice of purchasing insurance to cover them in the event they are injured by an uninsured driver.

3. Giving drivers and insurers flexibility to determine benefits and costs, rather that mandating certain benefits.

A Freedom Party government will allow a diversity of approaches to keeping costs down, rather than continue to impose a single, government-mandated statutory benefits approach that tends to invite insurance fraud.

4. Ending the government price manipulation and pre-approval process that ultimately forces low-risk drivers to subsidize higher-risk drivers.

The Freedom Party takes the position that no driver should have to pay part of the real cost of another driver's insurance: "From each according to his risk, to each according to his policy", says McKeever.

McKeever says that simply cutting benefits cannot improve the situation. "Liberal, NDP and Progressive Conservative governments have been operating on the pay-less-by-getting-less principle. Increasingly, that approach has actually left Ontarians paying higher premiums for less coverage. That is not, in any reasonable person's mind, an improvement".

Nor will price caps help, according to McKeever. "Insurance companies are raising premiums to compensate for very real revenue shortfalls. Ernie Eves and Dalton McGuinty might think they are winning a few votes by proposing or threatening price caps, but those caps will actually succeed only in forcing those companies to stop offering auto insurance in Ontario."

"Only Freedom Party is proposing an economically sound, just, and fair solution to the auto insurance problem facing Ontario", concludes the party leader.

Paul McKeever (who will be running in the riding of Oshawa, against Sid Ryan and Jerry Ouellette) is available to discuss this matter. You can contact him directly at:

***-***-**** (cell)

Freedom Party is expected to run candidates in approximately half of Ontario's ridings in the coming election.

For further information: Paul McKeever, Leader, Freedom Party of Ontario.
Oshawa Office Telephone: 905-721-9772.
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