Our Final Offer on the Auto Insurance Reform File

Twenty-two years ago today, the Alberta government implemented the Minor Injury Regulation, capping at $4000 (a sum that has since been adjusted annually to account for inflation) general damages compensation for Albertans who suffer minor injuries (whiplash, strains and sprains that don't evolve into chronic pain) due to someone else's negligent driving. An attempt by the then-Finance Minister (Pat Nelson) to cap compensation for far more seriously injured victims of reckless motorists was defeated in government caucus after Nelson's scheme was sharply criticized by the Calgary Herald's Danielle Smith (yes, our current Premier) in a column titled "Victims first: caps on injury must be dropped". As you can all read for yourselves, Smith concluded her persuasive column by saying, "If insurance reform is going to work for regular Albertans, preserving the rights and interests of victims must be the starting point."

Sadly, freedom-fighter media personality Danielle has putrefied into hypocrite lefty premier Danielle, leading a government that currently plans to implement an unjust, unnecessary, unconservative, unAlbertan, socialist-style no-fault scheme three months from today, ripping away from wrongfully injured Albertans their traditional civil legal rights to fair compensation from careless drivers' insurance companies. The UCP government intends to copy NDP Manitoba's chump change no-fault auto insurance benefits policy (which pays out a tiny fraction of what the average injured Albertan currently receives in benefits under the current standard auto policy in our province). Worse still, whereas at least Manitobans purchase their substandard no-fault auto insurance policies from a non-profit public insurer, the UCP government intends to force Albertans to purchase this crap from profit-driven, primarily Eastern or foreign based private auto insurance corporations (which will result in Albertans paying far more in premiums than what Manitoba motorists pay). 

Smith's government's "Care-First-For-Auto-Insurers" no-fault law flies in the face of the column she wrote 23 years ago. It flies in the face of a resolution passed over 50 years ago by the Canadian Bar Association, which states that "the right of an individual to recover general damages from the wrongdoer in motor vehicle accident cases and to have such right adjudicated in the courts is one of the most vital hallmarks of the Canadian system of justice." And it spits in the face of the party base, namely the UCP members who voted overwhelmingly at the last party AGM to scrap then-Finance Minister Nate Horner's patently asinine, staggeringly unpopular no-fault auto insurance scheme. Under the Smith government's so-called "Care-First" plan, a guy can blow a red light and slam into your wife's car, shattering her kneecap so badly that it has to be surgically removed, and she won't be able to sue him to recover full and fair injury compensation from his auto insurance company. Does that sound fair to you?

To the government's credit, this past summer, soon after insurance lobbyist Doug Horner's cousin Nate vacated the Finance portfolio and Jason Nixon became Minister of Finance, Minister Nixon's department asked injury lawyers: Can we lower premiums for good Alberta motorists while preserving the fundamental freedoms of innocent Albertans seriously injured by reckless drivers? The short answer to that question is recorded in THIS VIDEO. Read this Edmonton Journal column from September of last year, which succinctly outlines the road map to reduce rates without ripping away the rights of Albertans left with non-minor injuries suffered in car crashes caused by careless drivers.

It is beyond stunning that for over three years, the loudest voice in injury law has repeatedly explained to Danielle Smith's UCP government the other ways to reduce auto insurance premiums apart from ripping away rights from innocent victims, and yet this unconservative Premier continues to drive the no-fault bus towards an electoral cliff. Last month, Premier Smith's public approval rating dropped to 38%, her UCP lost a byelection to the NDP in a bedrock conservative constituency, and according to highly respected pollster Janet Brown, the UCP and NDP are now in a dead heat in popularity Alberta-wide, with the NDP ahead in both Edmonton and Calgary. It's time for the Premier to listen to the voice of reason and have her Treasury Board & Finance (TBF) department -- with its new Finance Minister, his new Chief of Staff, new Deputy Minister and a new Superintendent of Insurance -- tell the no-fault fans at the out-of-control Auto Insurance Rate Board "Close, but no cigar!"

Also last month, the no-fault fans at the AIRB very quietly released a Final Report on how Alberta's auto insurance industry fared in 2025. Turns out that insurance lobby tall tales of the industry being poor, malnourished and barely making ends meet last year were, to put it mildly, "greatly exaggerated". While page 19 of the AIRB's actuary's report shows average premiums spiking from $1805 in '24 to $1988 in '25, page 20 shows claims costs plummeting from $1825 in '24 (mostly due to that darned Cowtown hailstorm) down to $1398 in '25.  Yeah: $1988 in, $1398 out -- that's 70 cents in claims costs for every buck collected in premiums (not to mention, of course, the outrageous fortune in profits earned investing those premiums and accumulated capital in '25)!

The reality is that insurance companies love to plead poverty and beg the government to relieve them from the responsibility to fairly compensate Albertans injured by reckless drivers, and yet those same insurance companies brag to their shareholders about the eye-popping profits they're making in investment income. Let's face it: if auto insurance companies really were losing money in Alberta, they'd be more than happy to leave the province and have the government set up a publicly run insurance corporation in their place.

So here's the deal, Danielle (and we've warned you before): Albertans generally, and UCP members in particular, are going to need you to smarten up and park this putrid no-fault auto insurance plan. We do not want you shoving nanny state no-fault down our throats. Make this Care-First crap an OPTIONAL add-on to existing Section B benefits, protect the rights of Albertans permanently injured by at-fault drivers, and reduce rates by trimming excessive insurer profits, bloated broker commissions and by scrapping the insurance premium tax. Do that, and victims' rights advocates can be as chummy with you as you are with your bestie, Mark Carney.

Let's set November 20 (50 days from now) as a deadline for a public announcement by your government that the fundamental rights and freedoms of ALL permanently injured, innocent Albertans victimized by negligent drivers will be protected under your 2027 auto insurance reforms, failing which an army of injury lawyers and our allies will attend the UCP AGM on November 27 to team up with other freedom fighter Albertans who are right peeved with you -- and you will taste our Rath. It's not personal, Dani; it's strictly business.

About the author of this blog post: A couple of weeks ago, injury lawyer and UCP member Mark McCourt wrote his 18th guest column (since the 2023 Alberta election) on the issue of auto insurance reform: 5 of them (including this one last month) in the Western Standard, 6 in the Calgary Herald and 7 in the Edmonton Journal. He spent much of his summer writing about this matter and meeting with new TBF bosses to share his expertise on this important issue, advocating for reforms that will preserve tort rights for innocent Alberta auto accident victims with non-minor injuries while reducing rates for automobile insurance policyholders with good driving records. But summer's done, and a chill wind blows, so if the UCP government hasn't met his November 20 deadline to publicly announce that all permanently injured Albertans' auto accident tort rights will be protected, he will be off to Calgary a week later to attend the UCP AGM. He won't be travelling alone. He will go there to chew bubblegum and kick ass -- and by then, he just might be all out of bubblegum.