Trial lawyers have ear of Ontario’s finance minister on auto reform, IBC says

Ontario’s personal injury lawyers appear to have the Ontario Finance Minister’s ear when it comes to increasing access to tort for auto insurance injury claimants, the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) has cautioned the insurance industry.
Ontario’s insurance regulator, the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO), recommended in April that the province lower deductibles applied to personal injury awards in auto insurance claims.
FSCO also appears ready to discuss the possibility of removing the verbal threshold that determines the cases to which the deductibles apply.
Insurance industry representatives say the move to lower deductibles and/or eliminate the threshold would threaten any gains made in FSCO’s recommendations to curb insurers’ accident benefits costs.
But the argument doesn’t appear to have any traction with Ontario Minister of Finance and Revenue Dwight Duncan.
“The trial lawyers have been very, very active in lobbying the government to open up the access for tort, and there are some indications from the government that they are listening to trial lawyers,” Barbara Sulzenko-Laurie, IBC’s vice president of policy told Chubb Canada’s first annual Women’s Executive Forum in Toronto on June 3.
“If that comes to pass, if that is a part of this [FSCO] reform that is underway, we’re certainly at risk of adding a broken B.I. [bodily injury] system to a broken A.B. [accident benefits] system. So it’s not an optimistic future we’re seeing here.”