Play it Again, Sam

Once again, Ontario has announced another package of auto insurance reforms.

With a provincial election just months away, the Ontario government recently announced yet another plan to make auto insurance affordable for Ontario drivers. The plan is focused on addressing fraud and providing better access to care.

The announcement by Charles Sousa, Ontario’s minister of finance, along with attorney general Yasir Naqvi, follows several months of consultation with a broad range of stakeholders regarding David Marshall’s report, Fair Benefits Fairly Delivered: A Review of the Auto Insurance System in Ontario, released in April 2017. Marshall’s report contained 35 recommendations to reform the auto insurance system.

Willie Handler, Consultant, Willie Handler and Associates

I reviewed Marshall’s report and the province’s subsequent announcement in December 2017 with interest. I spent more than 20 years of my professional life designing similar reform packages and have a good sense of how the Ontario system will respond to Marshall’s proposed reforms.

Although the government’s plan announced in December 2017 purports to flow from Marshall’s report from last spring, only the creation of a new network of independent evaluation centres [IECs] originated from Marshall’s report. Programs of care and contingency fees, announced in December and mentioned in Marshall’s report, are work already underway by the government. Marshall, an advisor to Ontario’s finance minister on auto insurance and pensions, never dealt with fraud.

For me, Ontario’s plan is an admission that the Marshall report does not provide much in the way of workable solutions for the government.

Read the full article in the Digital Edition of the February 2018 Canadian Underwriter.

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Willie Handler, Consultant, Willie Handler and Associates