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THE WEEKEND OUTLOOK Friday March 1 1991- Page 11 Peoples Forum- Auto insurance policy questioned Editors note The following letter was released to the Halton Hills Herald for publication Subject Your recent article Public Auto Goal of Let me state up front that I do speak from a particular bias having spent my entire working career almost years in the general insurance business Nevertheless I dont feel that in validates the following com ments The very first point you make is that of the soaring profit made by the industry following in troduction of the Liberal nofault plan Any profit at all in 1990 over the million loss in 1988 or million loss in can of course be described as soaring On gross sales premiums of over billion what would you consider a fair profit You also neglect to mention that whatever premiums a company choose to charge they must first be approv ed by a government body the On tario Insurance Commission In fact a company cannot even reduce their rates without the ap proval of said commission You go on to state that the NDP approach to auto insurance is based on the principle of what is in the best interest of the people of Ontario Speaking now purely as a citizen of Ontario and not as an employee of an insurance com pany another government bureaucracy is far from my best interest I need only cite the Post Office or Workers Compen sation Board as examples and rest my case However anyone who was living in British Colum bia during the Insurance Cor poration of British Columbia strike of or 1980 would cer tainly be additional testimony against a government monopoly The Corporation of BC is often touted as the ideal of government insurance yet it has had to be subsidized from the public treasury to the tune of million money which has never been paid back You suggest that the govern ment will set up a driver own ed insurance company Yet On tarios largest auto insurer under the current set up is the Co- Operators which could presently be described as driver owned The fact that not all drivers choose to insure with the Co- Operators indicates that freedom of choice is highly important to many You indicate a government dissatisfacation with the legisla tion of Bill threshold nofault auto insumace The Insurance Bureau of Canada has been monitoring closely the publics reaction to nofault and in general the reaction is positive Whatever flaws exist and it is not uncommon that as with any new system there will be some the government is empowered to corrent them through the Ontario Insurance Commission You justify the need for Government run insurance on the basis that it is the law- to have auto Insurance therefore it shouldnt be left in the hands of free enterprise It is also illegal for a person to appear in public nude should the government then take over the entire clothing business While its now law that I eat it is a necessity Why the government take over food production and distribution Why not banks Why not everything Where does it stop Now about your points about the government keeping costs down Reinsurance never comes into play when dealing with Private Passenger Auto Insumace Is the really concerned about sav ing premium dollars for those few really big corporations where the level of risk is so high that reinsurance is a factor Currently little cost is associated with the actual risk selection and underwriting of Private Passenger Auto In sumace What is driving the costs are claims and in the past the legal costs associated with settle ment of these claims Costly underwriting is again more a fac tor of insuring the larger more complex commercial fleets Private passenger costs are limited to the clerical functions of entering the data from the ap plication into a computer system wherein It is then automated You state that private insurers are unfairly placing many drivers in the Facility Associa tion While it is true that there are some drivers in the Facility Association that should rightly be written on the insurance com panys books the government established legislation does not give the insurance companies the choice of putting a risk into Facility Association or not The choice rests within the jurisdic tion of the insureds agent Perhaps the legislation needs to be changed Sure there is a redundancy of computer systems etc although personally I believe a single system to handle Ontarios million drivers and million vehicles would be unmanageable But in any case such an argument could be extended to any facet of society eg why do we have so many layers of government The auto insurance industry spends very few dollars on adver tising and I cannot believe that a government run bureaucracy can or will reduce administrative costs As to the intercompapy paper shuffle and effort in settl ing a claim involving more than one insurer reductions of that nature were in fact implemented by the effect of No fault which it would appear the NDP does favor Finally after reading your ar ticle about how much was wrong with privately run auto in surance it cant be all bad as you state the will be study ing the operation of those same private insurers to adopt those aspects that would be an asset to the public plan Regardless of how often I read government statements as to how they are keeping an open mind on the subject and are listening to the comments of all parties con cerned the general impression seems to be dont confuse us with facts A government run auto insurance plan is a basic tenet of the NDP government and will be implemented regardless even if that means taking precedence over issues such as the state of the economy or the environment Respectfully yours Shepherd Georgetown Propunishment group airs beef To the Editor The feds cancellation of their previously planned murderers conference does not mean that prisoners will not be heard under another format Five prisoner groups were heard by the allparty Justice Committee on Sentenc ing In fact serial child killer Clif ford Olsons submission was acknowledged on page 294 of the report We are not objecting to ap propriate government consulta tions with prisoners prior to any major changes in sentencing What we are objecting to is the past predominance of selfvested antipunishment groups that have been given without a proper balance of propunishment groups like ours The allparty committee hear ings into Bill C58 completed last fall heard from 9 groups of which none were victim groups All were either civil servants par tially government funded groups offender groups or legal defence groups That wasnt fair We would like to thank the Canadians cynical about our leaders Dear Sir Canadians from sea to sea are growing increasingly angry frustrated and cynical about both their political leaders and institu tions Who can blame them Prime Minister Mulroneys government rammed through the Goods and Services Tax despite overwhelming opposition by citizens He tried to do the same with the Meech Lake Accord but was foil ed by a filibustering Manitoba MLA Many Canadians feel that the only lime when they can exert real control over their govern ments is on election day once every three or four years In bet ween voters must put up with what amounts to an elected dic tatorship Thats no way to run a country Canadians must get a grip on their own destiny through the system of citizeninitiated referendums Initiatives allow citizens to make laws directly when their political represen tatives refuse to represent them Initiatives have worked well in Switzerland for more than a and in the United States for most of this century Indeed a number of Canadian provinces once had laws providing for in itiatives its time we brought them back We invite all Canadians who share our commitment to direct democracy to help promote in itiatives in any way which they can They would be doing their country a wonderful service Yours truly David Somervilte President The National Citizens Coalition various businesses in the GeorgetownActon area who posted our Petition calling for Mandatory Minimum Sentences for Violent Crimes as their postings enabled us to collect thousands of more signatures to bring our total across southwestern Ontario to over 50000 We also want to thank your local Garth Turner for presenting these petitions in Parliament and for being so sym pathetic to our cause during our GeorgetownActon efforts in the fall of We hope your readers will con tact Garth Turner with their con cerns about the Justice System now while Sentence and Parole Reform are being considered by the Government of Canada We know Mr Turner wants to hear from his constituents on this issue and that he will forward their concerns where it will count so please dont forget Gordon Guelph Write us a letter The Herald wants to hear from you If you have an opinion you want to express or a comment to make send us a letter or drop by the office Our address is 45 Guelph Street Georgetown On tario L7G3Z6 All letters must be signed Please include your address and telephone number for verifica tion The Herald reserves the right to edit letters due to space limita tions Seniors angry at town council Dear Editor It seems the next municipal election is to be fought on the backs of seniors There it is for all to see The seniors centre is deleted from the Capital Budget Forecast and councillors protect themselves by saying Staff deemed the centre too expensive to be considered The Herald February 23rd quoting Johnston It is rather strange that it is deleted con sidering the fact that it never was In a capital forecast This perhaps illustrates the devious meanderings of political minds at least the political minds that we are burdened with in Georgetown Perhaps it is includ ed and deleted in the same docu ment to demonstrate what might pass for steadfastness in the face of a popular issue Are our politi cians saying No we must hold the line on taxes Perhaps we might get this in the budget for 1996 or 1997 says Mayor Miller ref The Herald February 1991 in time for his retirement Speaking for the Association I must say we are very disap pointed and I think can speak for the Board Directors and say we are not surprised We noticed the reservations of some councillors when we made the presentation to the Council last May We noticed recently a reluc tance in some councillors to look us in the eye At least to their credit there is shame but we deplore the lack of openness on the part of the CoundL After all there is a demonstrated need for seniors centres in Georgetown and Ac ton Council demonstrated it themselves when Councillor Ren- nie conducted a survey of seniors on this topic in May of 1988 The prevalence of seniors centres elsewhere was also demonstrated about the same time by John Forestell conducting a survey of other municipalities in Southern Ontario Let the Halton Hills councillors face the results of their own studies come down out of their Taj Mahal and meet with us in good faith to discuss how we can jointly make seniors centres a reality for Georgetown and Acton Unfortunately we are not sure we have sufficient faith to work on this jointly with the present team of councillors Perhaps we have to postpone progress until next year In the meantime it is the Boards intention to proceed on the course it has Bet to develop public awareness and support raise funds wherever it can and engage in political ac tion to the extent necessary We in Hills need a little joy from our tax dollars There is surely none in the Capital Budget Forecast Sincerely President Georgetown and District Seniors Association questioned Dear Editor It is interesting to see that Giuseppe Gori thought that was enough stimulated by his letter to reply to it That is true yes But I was under the impression that he was stimulated to respond to my previous letter of January 23 He suggests that this might be the beginning of dialogue I was pleased the Giuseppe agreed with three of the five points I made on my wish list but was not at all surprised on the stance he took on abortion The feminist writer Adrienne Rich in her book Of Woman Born makes the point that in a world where women could have complete charge of their own sex uality Note that this idea is quite different from the words sexual liberation Giuseppe uses in his letter abortion would not exist No woman could con ceive a child only to abort it Her decision to bear a child would be taken responsibly in the knowledge that she was making a serious lifelong commitment to that childs nurture into responsible adulthood She would see her childs life as infinitely precious But we do not live in a perfect world Now many women are forced into unwanted pregnan cies by rape or a husbands desire for a son or ignorance or slate coersion or church teachings Thus women are trap ped into becoming baby fac tories hating the human life growing within them torn bet ween anger and despair Such women do not make good mothers Babies bom to such mothers are damaged before they leave the womb For those of us on the outside of such womens situations to judge them is hypocritical and unkind I know that the Family Coalition Party is against abortion and thinks of it as murder But there are many kinds of murder How active is the Family Coalition Party in stamping out child abuse incest poverty or war for that matter All these evils murder the human body and spirit Which is worse to let a woman abort a fetus she knows she cannot bring up properly or to allow that fetus to grow up in abuse hatred poverty and despair and then to turn it into cannon fodder and blast it into smithereens as we are now doing Persian Gulf Giuseppe ended his letter by saying her perceived that I would happily get rid of the values on which our society is based The heritage is based on the Holy Bible a very complex library of books written over many centuries It was writ ten by men living in a different world from ours trying to make sense of their own situations It is full of great wisdom it is also full of human Our job is to app ly its best truths to the twentieth century Those truths demand human accountability to God its most perceptive writers suggest such accountability can only arise out of human freedom The central figure of the Christian part of that heritage is Jesus Christ At the beginning of his ministry he said he had been appointed by God to set at liberty those who areoppressed Luke vs I would put it to all who take the Bible literally that worldwide those who are most oppressed are women They were oppressed when Jesus said those words they still are to day and that brings me to my se cond point The world view is based on and dominance It postulates a transcendent male God out there who created man to have dominion over nature and woman to be subservient to man tohelphimout Historically the edicts of this God have been passed down through a priestly male heirar- to the troops Thu it assumes that some people have the right to govern and others the duty to be governed It is in teresting to note that both Presi dent Bush and Sadaam Hussein have invoked this God in the present war In answer to Giuseppes final question onto which new moral system would I be rooted I do have such a system It is not all new in fact many of its elements are far older than the patriarchy which the heritage espouses But as this let ter is already too long I wont go into it now Sincerely Joan Davison Georgetown