No-fault Insurance? Cheaper premium, but what do you get in the end?

Scenario:  You suffer serious injuries in a car accident in Vancouver due to someone else's negligence.  Your insurance coverage doesn't cover the things that your doctors tell you you need. You walk into a lawyer's office, and they tell you that because you selected no-fault insurance, there isn't anything you can do.

Fortunately, this scenario doesn't play out very often in B.C.  We have a full tort system that allows people to be put back to the position they were in before the collision, as best as money can accomplish that.  But we got very close to this scenario in 1997.  If you change the above scenario just slightly, in that you change the cities from Vancouver to Saskatoon, it has happened a whole lot since 2003.

In Saskatchewan, it has been just over a decade since you could choose to have either:

• no-fault insurance (which is similar to the system we have in place in B.C. for workplace incidents, where you can receive benefits for lost wages, and care costs, but you cannot sue the person that caused the injury, and you cannot recover anything for your pain and suffering); or
• tort insurance (which is like the system we have in place in B.C., where you can sue the other driver for lost wages, care costs, pain and suffering, etc.)

Now, after 10 years, and on the back of a man rendered a quadriplegic in a motor vehicle accident who signed up for no-fault insurance, was injured, and found that the no-fault benefits provided were not enough, the Courts have finally made it clear that the no-fault insurance scheme does not work in all cases. They have given the injured man the ability to sue to recover the shortfall between the benefits and his actual losses.

Due to a courageous man by the name of John Acton and his lawyers, the Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear the appeal from a decision of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal.  That decision allows Mr. Acton to sue for benefits that were not provided to him, so hopefully the above scenario will not play out as often as it has in the past.  Even more importantly, with the hindsight gained from the Saskatchewan experience, it hopefully won't play out at all in British Columbia.

Why does this matter in British Columbia?  We have a tort system?    When the time comes for you to voice your choice should no-fault insurance raise it's head again in B.C., I think it behooves us all to learn from the mistakes of the past.