Time to Scrap Nate's-Fault Auto Insurance Scheme

In flagrant disregard of experts who warn that switching from an at-fault auto insurance system to no-fault tends to result in more dead people on the roads, Premier Danielle Smith has yet to scrap CINO Finance Minister Nate Horner's destructive plan to impose on Albertans a no-fault auto insurance scheme starting January 1, 2027. Jason Kenney, who was replaced as Premier by Smith in 2022, alerted Albertans that year that "the lunatics are trying to take over the asylum." Presently, the lunatics appear to have succeeded.   

News flash: bureaucrats tend to love bureaucracy, and Nate Horner's so-called "Care-First" auto insurance scheme (see the UCP gov't's no-fault insurance bill, laden with a generous helping of WCB-style bureaucracy) is chock full of bureaucraty goodness.

What's more, since privately delivered no-fault (see Ontario, highest auto insurance rates in Canada) is disastrous, most no-fault provinces turf the auto insurance industry in favour of a single, government-run auto insurance corporation (yup, more bureaucracy). That said, public auto insurance would save motorists money, as noted in this superbly written Edmonton Journal guest column advocating for a publicly delivered at-fault (tort law based) auto insurance system.

For over two decades, a small coven of unelected Alberta Finance bureaucrats with a fetish for no-fault auto insurance have hoped for a Finance Minister foolish enough to try to push their plot to the end zone. They had a decent shot in 2003, under King Ralph's Finance Minister Pat Nelson, who was looking for a way to reduce rates for the young and the reckless (including her son Troy, whose auto insurance rates reportedly were astronomical). However, freedom fighters including our fearless firm founder and a Calgary Herald columnist by the name of Danielle Smith (yes, our current Premier) helped convince Klein's PC caucus to defeat the FinMin's MR (ministerial recommendation) by a single vote margin in October 2003, leading to the Minor Injury Regulation in October 2004 and Mrs. Nelson's exit from politics the following month.

Unfortunately for those unelected no-fault fan snivel serpents in TBF, two decades then went by without a FinMin dupable enough to bamboozle into buying the no-fault boondoggle they were selling. Not Nate's older and wiser cousin Doug Horner, not Travis Toews, not even the NDP's Joe Ceci were going to fall for the pinhead Finance bureaucracy's proposed no-fault fiasco. But then came Nate Horner, the aw shucks good ol' boy from Pollockville, Alberta. And naive Nate bought in hook, line and sinker. Gosh, it's almost as if Nate wants to sewer Albertans' rights to fair injury compensation so as to subsidize the collision/comprehensive premiums on his benefactor buddies' Bentleys!

Nate has hung on to his planned no-fault scheme (hatched by a handful of insurance policy bureaucrats in his department) despite a 13-11 cabinet vote against it, despite polls consistently showing opposition to it amongst severely normal Albertans in the 75% range, despite a consensus solution brought to him over a year and a half ago by ACTLA, IBC and IBAA to reduce rates within the existing "at-fault" (tort) auto insurance system, despite the insurance industry admitting that rates will likely rise under this so-called "Care First" fiasco, and most recently despite an overwhelming rejection of his ill-advised "raise rates and remove rights" plan by party members at the UCP AGM a month and a half ago.

So with that as a basis, what should Premier Smith do? Channel her inner Ralph. Admit that she done goofed giving Nate this file, concede (as Redford infamously did) that "mistakes were made", and vow to quell the bozo eruption by replacing Horner on this matter with Justice Minister Amery, who (perhaps unlike Nate) possesses legal acumen, a political future, and the common sense to go with made-in-Alberta solutions that will reduce rates, respect rights and be popular with Albertans.