ALD. RANKIN CHARGES: |

‘Car insurance extortion racket’

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Car insurance in B.C. has become a racket. A more
accurate description would be an extortion racket or a

protection racket.

We have compulsory car
insurance. But we have to buy
that insurance from privately
owned insurance companies.
They set their own rates and
their own rules. No limitations
have been placed on their
powers. They can do as they like.
If you refuse to pay their exorbi-
tant rates, you get no insurance.

And if you drive without a pink
slip. the police arrest you. You
pay a heavy fine or go to jail or
both. If this isn’t an extortion
racket, I don’t know what is.
This isn’t so very different
from the organized mobs which
offer ‘‘protection’’ to indi’
viduals and businesses in U.S.
cities, and some Canadian too.

gee the most bizarre yarn yet to come out of

Victoria during the annual Socred “‘bull.session’’ of
the B.C. Legislature! is the one on how a U.S. steal of Canadian
land, water, and sovereign independence, can be transformed
overnight into a Socred plan for providing British Columbians
with much greater park-recreational facilities.

It was a yarn well calculated to make a bourgeois Liar’s
Club’ blush, but Socred Recreation and Conservation Minister
Ken Kiernan told it on a TV program with a straight face.

It is said upon occasion that our Asian brothers show a
deep concern about. the risk of losing face. Well that’s
something the Establishment politician and particularly those
matured in the political mash of Social Credit never seem to
worry about. Obviously such people must regard the rest of
mankind as being childishly naive, damn fools, inbeciles, or a
combination of all three. That makes saving face easy no
matter what the circumstances.

Some time ago the Bennett government gave the Seattle
City Light Corp., the right to flood the Skagit Valley any time it
saw fit. Meantime giving away some 6,000-acres at the
basement-bargain price of $5.00 an acre.

Now hungry for Canada’s water, piecemeal or
continental, Seattle City Light now plans to dam up the Skagit
River and add 6,000 acres of flooded land to Ross Lake, thereby
bringing U.S. hydro requirements for the Seattle area up to
date. It also means that British Columbians have had a 6,000-
acre bit taken out of their rapidly dwindling recreational park’
lands.

“Tut, tut,’’ says Houdini Kiernan, ‘‘that’s where you are
all wrong.”’ Look what a beautiful lake you’ll have, right in
your own park (or what’s left of it. You can go fishing, boating,
swimming, water-skiing — or drowning, to your heart’s
content. Having nothing but your best interests in mind, your
government moved to give your water to Seattle (for a slight
consideration of course — and. you the ‘right’ to swim in it.”
Those are not Kiernan’s exact words but they fit his TV yarn to
ae! ae

Sometimes one wonders: How long Oh Lord, how long will
B.C. tolerate this brand of Socred guff, served up with every
give-away to U.S. monopoly freebooters?

Perhaps some readers may, but we just cannot recall one
solitary giveaway, large or small, that following a big public
protest, the Socred government hasn’t unloaded a barrage of
specious excuses, explanations, etc., patterned after the
Kiernan fairy tale on the Skagit Valley giveaway, all generally
of a very low grade.

That of course is to be expected, but the tragedy is they
invariably get away with it. and with the equally tragical result
that B.C.’s resources, above and below ground, are being
bartered away for a fast buck now — with little thought or
concern about B.C.’s generation of tomorrow being left with
nothing but a raped and barren wilderness.

Yet what is probably more incomprehensible is that the
sovereign electorate of British Columbia in 1969, after
seventeen years of these resources hijackers, should give them
another three or four years to dispose of the balance of B.C. to
the U.S. and home-grown monopoly plunderbund.

Next year will mark the Centennial of B.C.’s entry into
Confederation. It will also mark the centenary of the struggle
of B.C.’s people, largely inspired by the struggles of the
Caribour gold miners, to effectively block the U.S. annexa-
tionists and their handful of B.C. traitors, who attempted to
grab-up B.C. whole and make it part of U.S. terrirtory. A
united people defeated that attempted grab.

A century later a Socred regime, too long on the loose, is
doing the same thing piecemeal, but none the less effectively,
as the Kiernan’s Skagit Valley giveaway and its accompanying
fairytale makes obvious. Perhaps it is time we took the
lessons of a century ago to heart!

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 13, 1970—Page 2

.

If you don’t pay up for this kind
of ‘‘protection’’, they send out
their strong arm boys to work
you over, wreck your business
and teach you a lesson.

Here in B.C. the insurance
companies don’t need to send
out their strong arm boys as
collection squads. They have the
law on their*side in Premier
Bennett’s ‘‘dynamic society”’.

No real competition exists
among the insurance com-
panies when it comes to rates.
They get together and set rates.
They compete among them-
selves for your business — but
they don’t undersell each other.
On one thing they are agreed —
and that is that you must pay
through the nose. That’s why
B.C. insurance rates are among
the highest in Canada. That’s
why the profits of insurance
companies in B.C.— now that we
have compulsory insurance —
will be the highest in North
America.

The greed of the insurance
companies knows no _ limits.
Now they’ve made a new ruling
that anyone convicted of a
speeding offence will have his
insurance rates increased by 25
percent. Each additional
conviction will bring a further
boost of 15 percent.

This also is straight extortion.
It means that now you will be
fined twice for a speeding
offence — once by the traffic
court and a second time by the
insurance company.

One reason given by insurance
companies for this new increase
in rates is that it will cut down on
speeding and_ therefore on
accidents.

My reply is that enforcement
of the law is not the respon-
sibility of insurance companies.
If fines need to be increased,
that’s a matter for our legis-
latures. It can’t be used as an
excuse by insurance companies
to fill their own pockets.

But that isn’t all. This ruling of
the insurance companies that
rates will be increased every
time there is a speeding con-
viction was made only a couple
of weeks ago. It is a principle of
law that it can’t be made retro-
active. If a law is passed making

a certain act a crimé, you can’t
convict a person for Committing
this act before the law was
passed. But that is exactly what
some insurance companies are
doing.

They are making their ruling
retroactive to any speeding con-
victions incurred in the last
three years. This is clearly
illegal. But the government is
doing nothing to stop them. Isn’t
this further proof that in B.C. car

insurance has become an extor- |

tion racket?

If the insurance companies can
get away with making this ruling
retroactive for three years,
what’s to stop them from making
it retroactive for five years or
even ten? And if they can
increase rates for a speeding con-
viction, what’s to stop them

from increasing rates every

time you are” convicted for —
parking overtime in a one-houl
zone or failing to keep your
meter supplied with nickels?”
There's no end to this sort of
racket. a

If you are already insured and
your insurance company now
tries to stick you with an added
premium for a speeding con
viction incurred before Jan. 1.
1970, my advice is: ‘‘don't pay
it’. Take it to a small debts
court and fight the case. ;

The only way we are going t0
end this extortion racket in B.C.
is through a publicly operated
insurance at. cost. Then rates
would be one half of what they
are now.

Labor blasts Hydro hike.

The B.C. Federation of Labor
has launched a province - wide
campaign against the planned 15
percent boost in electricity
rates. This was announced by
BCFL secretary Ray Haynes
last week.

Haynes said that petitions will
be circulated widely and sent to
Premier W.A.C. Bennett and
Hydro chairman Dr. Gordon
Shrum. The petition urges the
government to increase power
fates fo. athe .U.S.,-and 1
necessary, subsidize extra costs
out of general revenue rather
than pass them on to the public.

The labor federation places
the blame for higher rates on the
sale of power to the U.S. at what
it describes ‘‘extremely low”
rates.

Haynes told a press conference
that the government is hiding
behind the ‘‘big lie’’ when it
attempts to blame the workers
for the proposed hydro boost. He

said wage increases in the next
two years will cost Hydro and
extra $12 million.

“However, during the same
two years, the increase in
interest costs — the cost of
Hydro’s borrowing for its
various projects — will be $19
million and $23.7 million
respectively. This is three and
four times greater than the
increase in total wage costs.”

Haynes said the fact is that if
labor costs were the only costs to
B.C. Hydro, the householder in
B.C. could have enjoyed steadily
Mecreasing rates since 1962
because the increased produc-
tivity has reduced the total labor
costs from $4.72 per 1,000
killowatt hours in the year
ending March 1963 to $4.05 per
1000 killowatt hours in the year
ending March, 1969. ;

Haynes charged that the
Socred government has

condemned citizens to pay huge
interest charges for Hydro
development because of the
expensive Peace River powel —
and the ‘‘giveaway’’ of the
Columbia. I
Also last week, Ald. Harry
Rankin charged that B.C. Hydro
is fooling the public when it says
an increase in bus fares is
needed to finance a_ transit
deficit. He said ‘“‘Hydro’s powe!
division charges the bus.divisio?
enormous prices for electricity:
Hydro is able to show a deficit in
transit because of this jiggery
pokery, which mixes buses and
electricity together.”
Meanwhile, the Communist
Party announced that it will
stage a protest in front of the
Legislature at 1 p.m. Tuesday:
Feb. 17 against the hydro boost.
Those taking part from the
Lower Mainland are urged to be
at the Tsawassen ferry at I!
a.m. Monday, returning at 5 p.m-