35 Years — A Good Run

Today’s blog post is brought to you by the firm’s principal counsel, Mark McCourt, who last month wrote his 16th guest column on auto insurance reform in the last three years, and earlier this month provided a written submission to the Auto Insurance Rate Board for its 2026 Annual Review.

I became a lawyer 35 years ago today. Four years later, in August of 1995, I founded motor vehicle accident (MVA) injury firm McCourt Law Offices. Since that time, our law firm has helped thousands of innocent injured Albertans recover full and fair compensation from reckless drivers’ insurance companies. Currently my firm employs a number of people including my family: me, my wife and our three adult children. However, most of them will lose their jobs on January 1, 2027, if the United Conservative Party government goes ahead with plans to essentially obliterate Alberta's automobile accident injury tort law system and replace it with a no-fault insurance scheme that typically leads to more dead people on the roads (perhaps "acceptable collateral damage" in the phenomenally problematic mind of our current UCP leader). 

As the Canadian Bar Association stated about MVA tort law over 50 years ago, “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.” At present time, it remains the law that if you are injured by a negligent motorist in an Alberta automobile accident, you have the right to compensation from the at-fault driver's insurance company for your pain and suffering, income loss, out-of-pocket expenses and other damages. It will come as no surprise that auto insurance companies are not particularly keen to fairly compensate injured car crash victims unrepresented by legal counsel. That's where injury lawyers such as those at our firm come in -- and for over 31 years, our experienced, dedicated team has ensured that our clients are fully and fairly compensated.

However, Albertans' fundamental freedoms are under attack. In May 2023, the UCP won the provincial election. Soon thereafter, Premier Danielle Smith appointed Nate Horner as her Finance Minister and commanded him to work with stakeholders (plaintiff personal injury lawyers and automobile insurance lobbyists) to review recommended reforms to make auto insurance rates more affordable. Minister Horner ruled out no-fault insurance as an option unless it was "the only answer" to reduce rates, vowing that such a major change would need a mandate from Albertans. But while new Finance Minister Horner appeared to understand that Alberta needs to reform auto insurance within the current tort system, a handful of bureaucrats in his department with a fetish for no-fault had high hopes that unlike previous Finance Minister Travis Toews, Horner would be sufficiently dupable as to be bamboozled by these bureaucrats into buying the unprincipled, unjust option they were shovelling. 

The Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) rapidly responded with a proposal titled "Enhancing Care and Expanding Choice" which recommended keeping intact the rights of innocent injured Albertans to sue careless drivers for non-minor injuries and giving policyholders more options in purchasing coverage for medical expenses. The proposal, which also recommended scrapping the insurance premium tax and removing the grid rating system under which good drivers over-subsidize the rates of bad ones, predicted savings of about $325/yr on the average Albertan's auto insurance premium.

Vancouver-based Aaron Sutherland, chief Alberta lobbyist for the IBC, cited a survey commissioned by FAIR Alberta which "confirms there is little support for a move to a no-fault insurance system in Alberta." Sutherland aptly described no-fault insurance systems as "disastrous", noting that in provinces with no-fault auto insurance, "people injured in collisions are denied access to justice". 

Sutherland pointed out that "in provinces with 'no-fault' insurance systems (BC, Manitoba and Saskatchewan), the government sets strict limits on the benefits provided to those injured in a collision, and injured people cannot sue if they do not receive what they need to recover. These limits help keep costs and premiums down. However, in keeping claims costs low, those injured may receive far less in benefits and care than those living in a province with a competitive, tort-based auto insurance system. In short, you get what you pay for." In essence, turfing tort law for no-fault is like a 10% off shoe sale, where the catch is you only get one shoe. Actually, it's worse: Albertans will pay MORE for that one shoe (no-fault delivered by private, profit driven insurers) than what we presently pay for our current, best-in-class auto insurance system (tort law protecting your rights if you're injured by a negligent motorist plus immediate, ample care-first benefits payable to people hurt in car crashes regardless of fault). 

The Insurance Brokers Association of Alberta (IBAA) agreed that a no-fault system should not be implemented in Alberta, and recommended scrapping the insurance premium tax, allowing Albertans the option to choose a limited right to sue for minor injuries while maintaining full tort rights for non-minor injuries, and ending the over-subsidization of bad drivers' premiums by good drivers.

In a letter provided to Premier Smith and Finance Minister Horner over two years ago, the Alberta Civil Trial Lawyers Association (ACTLA) recommended "that the Alberta government implement the IBC's 'Enhancing Care & Expanding Choice' proposal as a framework for auto insurance reform in Alberta." Renowned Alberta economist Dr. Jack Mintz concurred with IBC, IBAA and ACTLA that the UCP government should not implement a staggeringly unpopular no-fault scheme and should instead maintain a tort-based auto insurance system for those Albertans left with permanent clinical impairment and/or chronic pain due to reckless drivers. And in a Calgary Herald guest column just over two years ago, I provided the road map to a "win-win-win" auto insurance reform plan for insurers, Albertans and our UCP government. 

Preposterously, despite this consensus amongst the stakeholders, CINO (conservative in name only) Finance Minister Horner and his merry band of insurance policy bureaucrats chose to ignore the reform recommendations of these informed experts and instead pass no-fault auto insurance legislation, following in the footsteps of NDP provinces such as Manitoba and BC rather than, for example, a Conservative province like Ontario (which last month opted to expand choice for auto insurance policyholders). In a nutshell, TBF's plan is lifted from Dick the Butcher's iconic line in William Shakespeare's play Henry VI, Part 2: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."  After all, with injury lawyers out of the way, who will stop insurance companies from sending injured Albertans to the insurance industry's notorious hired gun doctors and then cutting Albertans off their not-worth-the-paper-they're-written-on "Care-First" benefits?

Horner's actions are odious, and the fact that his actions occurred under the Premier's watch raise yet further questions about her conservative principles (or lack thereof). As conservative columnist Licia Corbella astutely observed, no-fault "flies in the face of everything the UCP government claims it stands for and was elected on — that is, smaller government, less red tape, personal responsibility and being a defender of our rights and freedoms." In her column, Corbella quoted Celyeste Power (who happens to be President and CEO of the Insurance Bureau of Canada) as opposing no-fault auto insurance in Alberta: "You would need to build a very big, expensive bureaucracy, there would be more red tape to wade through . . . and it wouldn’t actually result in any lower premiums for drivers."

Thankfully, a month after I called on Premier Smith to fire Horner, the aw-shucks cowpoke from Pollockville did Albertans a favour by "tendering his resignation" from cabinet. Smith promptly appointed Jason Nixon to replace backbencher Horner in the Finance portfolio (still waiting on those unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to be canned as well).

But here's the thing: if our Honourable Madam Premier now has the good sense to take the off-ramp I've helpfully provided (which could save Albertans over $700 per year on their car insurance rates) and direct Finance Minister Nixon to deposit Nate's no-fault scheme in the nearest trash bin forthwith, she can hang the goat horns on Horner for this monumental gaffe. However, if Danielle doesn't do a U-turn on no-fault insurance after having replaced the UCP FinMin, then this "worst possible option" auto insurance debacle is on her. Alberta Premiers who aren't morally corrupt protect the traditional civil legal rights of severely normal Albertans from avaricious, Eastern and/or foreign-based insurance corporations beholden to their shareholders. Sadly though, at least to date, "Premier Marlaina" appears hell-bent on protecting the powerful, profit-driven auto insurance industry from innocent, vulnerable Albertans wrongfully injured by reckless drivers. Reprehensible, Danielle. In a guest column in the Western Standard last year, I pointed out that when Ralph Klein (the last Alberta Premier to lead his party to two consecutive general election victories) screwed up, he had the political savvy to admit his errors, apologize and quickly correct course. Time to emulate King Ralph, Premier Smith! 

Let's be crystal clear: my daughter Sara and I, both card-carrying UCP members, are registered to attend the UCP AGM in Calgary at the end of November, along with hundreds of other Albertans Against No-Fault Insurance. If Premier Smith's UCP government takes my wise advice to dump hypocrite Horner's harebrained no-fault scheme in favour of nuanced, thoughtful, "made-in-Alberta" auto insurance reform solutions such as the ones I pitched to her over two years ago, we can be the bestest of buddies. However, if contrary to the overwhelming vote of UCP members (including Sara and me) at last year's AGM, no-fault is still on the 2027 implementation agenda by the time the McCourts arrive in Cowtown on November 27, you can bet that we (along with an army of audacious AANFI agitators) will join forces with our fellow freedom fighters focused on ousting the Premier and fracturing this Frankenparty, possibly leading to a Nenshi sorbet to cleanse the palate. That's right, Premier (and your executive directors Rob Anderson and Bruce McAllister, who should direct you to give your head a shake on this file without further delay): An organized, united platoon of irate injury lawyers and our clients, employees, friends (including physiotherapists and physicians), family and ordinary Albertans will cry "Havoc!", and let slip the dogs of war. Mutually assured destruction, baby.

Oh, have I got your attention now?

Kthxbye,

Mark

About the author: A generation ago, ACTLA member Mark McCourt was recognized by Alberta Venture Magazine as one of Alberta's 50 Most Influential individuals for his leading role (alongside Danielle Smith of all people) in opposing efforts by the provincial government and the multinational, multi-billion dollar insurance industry to rip rights away from innocent Albertans (mostly women and children) wrongfully injured by at-fault drivers. 35 years has been a good run, and he plans to retire before Christmas, less than a month after the coming UCP AGM. He's tired. He's rich. So Danielle Smith, if rather than wisely exercising sober second thought and permanently pressing pause on TBF's "Care-First" fiasco, you're instead itching to ram through an unjust, unnecessary, unconservative, unAlbertan no-fault scheme, thus infuriating an influential Albertan with an enraged battalion of relentless colleagues and nothing to lose, then... Bring. It. On.