Buh-bye, UCP

Shout out to April Fools' Day birthday girl Danielle Smith, who (good for her!) is Premier of Alberta despite some conservatives calling her "unfit for public office". A year ago today, our firm predicted that the Liberals would win the 2025 federal election, led by a new PM with a prestigious Harvard and Oxford education. If that prediction comes to fruition later this month, it'll be largely due to bozo eruptions by Premier Smith and her orange soulmate, POTUS 47. Also exactly one year ago, McCourt Law Offices predicted that a Harvard educated politician named Naheed Nenshi would lead his party to victory over the United Conservative Party in the 2027 provincial election. If that prediction comes true, it will be in no small part due to the UCP's disastrous Bill 47, intentionally introduced the day after the federal election campaign commenced last week in the hopes that reporters and the populace would be too fixated on that campaign to notice the bill.

Well, we noticed. A week ago, Finance Minister Nate Horner introduced his proposed Automobile Insurance Act in the Alberta Legislature for first reading, just days after being urged to get on with it already by his puppet masters at the Insurance Bureau of Canada. The bill purports to eliminate the rights and freedoms of Albertans to bring injury claims against reckless drivers, replace the province's existing tort law system with a no-fault auto insurance scheme, and grant the government immunity from any responsibility whatsoever to compensate Albertans for the damage this bill will cause.

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 multi-billion dollar insurance industry will be laughing all the way to the bank if this bill becomes law.

The UCP's so-called 'Care-First' no-fault benefits aren't worth the paper they're written on, because with lawyers out of the way, profit-driven private insurance companies beholden to their shareholders are just going to cut off your coverage while pocketing your premiums.

It's no surprise that polls show most Albertans opposed to no-fault, but the UCP's dirty little secret is that most cabinet ministers voted against the no-fault scheme last November -- and yet the government went full steam ahead with it anyway.

The rights and freedoms of regular Albertans to hold at-fault drivers accountable is a principle of fundamental justice, so why is the Finance Minister in charge of this bill rather than the Justice Minister?

Nate Horner has a tell when he's spouting misinformation about auto insurance: his lips move. It's probably not that Minister Horner is a baldfaced liar; he's merely clueless.

It's clear from a review of the bill that the inmates in the Finance Department are running the asylum. Bill 47 is a bureaucrat's dream, because it creates a massive WCB-style no-fault auto insurance bureaucracy that is unnecessary, unjust, unconservative and unAlbertan. It's a boondoggle of embarrassing proportions, and insurance lobbyist Doug Horner's younger cousin should withdraw the bill without further delay, apologize unreservedly to his cabinet colleagues and to Albertans generally, and tender his resignation forthwith.

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.

The UCP has given insurance companies the green light to jack up our rates for the next two years, and then rip away our longstanding consumer protections in 2027, which being an election year is just about the most boneheaded move a government could make. Nenshi is going to have a field day during the 2027 election campaign asking Albertans, "Are you shelling out more for car insurance now under the UCP's no rights no-fault regime than you were paying when the NDP was our government and you were legally entitled to full and fair compensation from reckless drivers' insurance companies?"

Unlike the UCP's repugnant "Raise Your Rates, Remove Your Rights" plan, our firm provided the government a proposal to reduce rates for good Alberta motorists by about $500/yr while preserving the traditional civil legal rights of innocent injured Albertans. Nate Horner ignored the proposal, and here we are.

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.

It would have been nice had the UCP not been stringing the personal injury bar along for the past twelve months, pretending that we were valued stakeholders in auto insurance "reform" discussions when in fact the government had made up its mind long ago and was already drafting this despicable bill. Plan A was to persuade the powers-that-be, through quiet backroom diplomacy, to come to their senses and listen to the majority of cabinet and indeed, the majority of Albertans. We won't get fooled again.

It's time for Plan B: noisy and persistent public condemnation of the UCP, and pivoting to persuade the NDP to adopt the obvious antidote to the government's "worst possible option" privately delivered no-fault scheme. Logically, the best possible option is of course publicly delivered at-fault auto insurance (reformed with nuanced changes to afford rate relief to good Alberta motorists) -- the polar opposite of the government's foolish plan.

Buh-bye, UCP. NDP, let's roll.

About the author of this blog post: Mark McCourt's UCP membership card expired April 1st. He has zero plans to renew it.