B.C. government calls on insurance brokers to help enforce family support obligations

B.C. insurance brokers do not want to be front and centre in the provincial governments recent legislative initiative to deny auto vehicle licenses and auto insurance to people who havent made child support payments, a representative of the Insurance Brokers Association of B.C. (IBABC) told a brokers convention in Jasper, Alberta.
IBABC 1st vice president, Ted Lewis, told a convention of the Insurance Brokers Association of Alberta that B.C. brokers are starting to mobilize to ask for amendments to Bill 33, so that the province, and not brokers, will be responsible for policing family maintenance payments.
Introduced in late April, Bill 33, the Attorney General Statutes Amendment Act, 2007, introduces stronger measures to enforce family maintenance payments, including denial of annual vehicle licences.
Instead of waiting for five years to deny a drivers licence, as B.C. currently does, we will be able to address non-payment annually, before the debt becomes overwhelming, said B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal, commenting on the bill at first reading.
B.Cs auto insurance is publicly operated and so it would be up to the distribution channel, the insurance brokers, to explain to clients who owe more than $3,000 in unpaid support payments why their vehicle insurance isnt going to be renewed.
Brokers shouldnt be involved, said Lewis, adding that the answer is for the government simply to suspend the drivers licenses.
The provinces Family Maintenance Enforcement Program (FMEP) collects over Cdn$160 million each year, benefiting 75,000 children, most of them from families of modest means.