UCP Insurance Deform: Raise Rates, Remove Rights

The spring session of the Alberta Legislative Assembly concluded May 15, 2025, with Royal Assent of Bill 47, the Automobile Insurance Act. In addition to passage of the United Conservative Party government's no-fault insurance bill, falsely advertised as "Care First" legislation, the session was notable for the expulsion from UCP caucus of two MLAs, Pete Guthrie and Scott Sinclair, for the offence of being actually conservative, and for the ongoing scrutiny and investigation of Premier Marlaina Danielle Smith's government's Corrupt Care Scandal. No word yet on when, in the spirit of truth in advertising, the UCP will officially change its name to the Unhinged Corruption Party. However, it's fair to say that the UCP government moving its no-fault scheme from the public scrutiny of the Legislative Assembly to dimly lit backrooms where unelected, unaccountable Treasury Board & Finance bureaucrats (with eager guidance from insurance lobbyists, no doubt) can formulate regulations behind closed doors is roughly equivalent to an assailant moving a victim from an abduction point to "the second location": it's unlikely to end well.

Back to the UCP's unjust, unnecessary, unpopular, unconservative, unAlbertan No-fault legislation: at the suggestion of our firm's founder and principal counsel, the opposition New Democrats proposed an amendment to Bill 47 to replace the misleading term "Care-First" with the more accurate term "No-Fault". Incompetent, spendthrift Finance Minister Nate "don't call me Doug Light" Horner rejected the suggested amendment, pointing out that fault still matters under the new legislation, in that insurance companies will still raise the rates of reckless drivers who cause car crashes. Those insurance companies, however, will no longer have to compensate the innocent injured victims of those reckless drivers, instead merely pocketing those premium surcharges and padding their plump profit margins. And let's cut the crap about the UCP's BS "Care-First" moniker: contrary to Minister Horner's imbecilic talking points, our existing tort law system is already "care first", in that people injured in auto accidents (regardless of fault) are entitled to immediate treatment under Section B of the Standard Auto Policy. The relevant difference, of course, is that innocent victims of negligent motorists under the existing system are additionally entitled to full and fair compensation from careless drivers' insurers for chronic pain and suffering, income loss, out-of-pocket expenses and lost homemaking capacity. Not so under the Unhinged Corruption Party's asinine No-Fault law, effective January 2027 (after further steep premium hikes for good Alberta motorists in 2025 and 2026). Horner makes a big deal of the fact that, on paper, no-fault medical expense benefits will increase significantly from the current $50,000 limits, a fact our firm exposed as meaningless and illusory in our New Year's blog post. An additional tidbit of info for our pathetically misinformed FinMin: in the over two decades since Section B medical expense benefits were increased from $10,000 to a $50,000 maximum, our experience has been that fewer than one in a thousand claimants have reached that $50,000 limit. 

In our April Fools' Day blog post, we already mentioned Horner foolishly tabling Bill 47 for first reading in the Legislature on March 24, 2025. Since presumably nobody read Horner that blog post (explaining to him the really big words), he stood in the Legislature a week later (April 8) to move second reading of the bill. A week after that (April 15), NDP MLA Samir Kayande said of the bill, "this is what amazes me about a Conservative government bringing this in, because it is anticonservative. It is the absence of conservatism. It is socialized risk. Who I really want to hear from on this bill is not just the Minister of Finance, who we have heard from, but I would also like to hear from the Minister of Justice because this is an issue of fundamental justice. If somebody hurts you, are they responsible for damages? Are they responsible for making it right?" The following day (April 16), in debate at second reading, NDP MLA Lorne Dach quoted our April blog post, stating, "With Bill 47, set to be rammed through the Legislative Assembly this spring unless the government exercises sober second thought and wisely presses the pause button, the UCP is raising our rates and ripping away our rights. This is a lose-lose proposition for Albertans, but the multibillion-dollar insurance industry will be laughing all the way to the bank if this becomes law." 

Given that, as we noted in our St. Patrick's Day blog post, the right of injured auto accident victims to recover full and fair compensation from careless drivers' insurers is "one of the most vital hallmarks of the Canadian system of justice", it is natural to wonder where Justice Minister Mickey Amery was during the debates over Bill 47. Evidently, he certainly wasn't standing proudly, publicly and courageously in defence of the traditional civil legal rights of innocent injured Albertans. On April 29, MLA Kayande asked Amery in Question Period, "why is the Justice Minister supporting no-fault car insurance?" Amery (clearly no JWR) declined to answer, because as the old political joke goes, it's not called Answer Period, amirite? The following day (April 30), however, Amery led the charge of UCP MLAs standing in favour of Bill 47 at second reading, just as he subsequently did on May 13 at Committee of the Whole and at third and final reading of the bill. Shameful. Perhaps the Unhinged Corruption Posse should rename Amery's portfolio the Ministry of Injustice. Alternatively, we respectfully submit that he would do well to smarten up without further delay.

Other noteworthy comments from His Majesty's Official Opposition during legislative debates over Bill 47 included MLA David Shepherd, again quoting our April blog post: "It’s probably an understatement to say that this is starting to become a habit with UCP politicos: selling out Albertans to unjustly enrich their corporate buddies. There were the Turkish Tylenot and ASG scandals, and now you can put this auto insurance fiasco in the same contemptible category. Maybe the Finance Minister will get to attend some more Oilers games on someone else’s dime, but ordinary Albertans are getting the short end of the stick." Member Calahoo Stonehouse had this to say: "Well, let’s follow the money because the money tells a story. Insurance companies donated $600,000 to the UCP in the last election. Let me restate that. Insurance companies donated $600,000 to the UCP in the last election. The Insurance Bureau of Canada, coincidentally, lobbied for this exact model, and now the UCP is repaying the favour by letting premiums soar and stripping away the rights of Albertans. This is not a reform; this is a shakedown."

And so, where do we go from here? Kissing UCP hiney has been a dismal failure for victims' rights advocates, to the point where perhaps we should take a page, or a few chapters, from outspoken lawyer Warren Kinsella's book, Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics (the outspoken founder of the Accident Victims/Insurance Policyholders Advocate has a copy he could lend to interested parties). Or maybe Justice Minister Amery, along with Premier's Chief of Staff Rob Anderson (a lawyer like Amery) will redeem themselves on this file by heroically ordering the foolish Finance Minister to make a U-turn in the regulations to this bill. However, on that note, we'll give MLA Shepherd the final word (especially since he once again quoted our April blog post in the legislative debates on this despicable bill): "As is the UCP’s typical modus operandi, Bill 47 leaves much of the government’s devious no-fault plans to be developed through regulations, where the UCP won’t have to bother with democratic niceties such as public consultation and open debate in the Legislature. A few naive or perhaps eternally optimistic lawyers hope the UCP will soften the blow to Albertans’ rights and freedoms with regulations far kinder and gentler than this reprehensible bill. But when someone shows you who they are, it’s best to believe them."