The impact of auto reform on Ontario residents

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The Insurance Bureau of Canada and the Financial Services Commission of Ontario have stated that the changes to the province’s auto insurance system will give consumers choice while still providing the most generous medical and rehabilitation benefits in the country.

ILSTV asked IBC’s Vice President of Policy Barb Sulzenko-Laurie about how these changes will impact the auto insurance system in Ontario.

Barb Sulzenko Laurie: Well, you know the other thing is I don’t think the changes are all that big. The changes that have been made to the standard auto products in Ontario make it look more like the standard auto products in, for example, New Brunswick or Alberta. It still has the provision on a no-fault basis for catastrophic injuries up to $1 million in med rehab assistance and up to $1 million in attendant care assistance is available, which the other provinces don’t have.

But largely it looks like the auto insurance product that people have been using in other provinces for a number of years. For most people – the vast majority of people – the injuries that they receive in a motor vehicle accident are going to require resources that don’t come anywhere near the resources that are available to them. So it’s easy to blow up the changes and in a macro sense, maybe they are significant but I think from the standpoint of the individual policyholder and the individual who is injured in a motor vehicle accident, I don’t think that they are so significant.

On the other hand, we do know that drivers have been increasingly alarmed about the price of auto insurance. Two years ago when we were saying that the average price of auto insurance in Ontario was about 25 percent higher than in the next most expensive province in Canada [Alberta], well now it’s 38 percent higher than in the next most expensive province in Canada. That means that people are paying for auto insurance in Ontario, more of their disposable income, more of the money they want to use for other things than in other provinces. Clearly they need some relief on that and if these reforms are the beginning of providing that relief in terms of the amount of their household resources that they have to spend on insurance, then I certainly am cheering them on and hopefully they will be, too.