The president of the 100% state-owned, state-run government insurance “corporation” (—wink!), called the Insurance “Corporation” of BC (ICBC), spent some of his extra taxpayer-paid time writing an editorial to the Province newspaper last week, blasting citizen-owned insurance companies for daring to 
complain that the state-owned government behemoth was lowering their “optional” insurance rates. Which sounds stupid on its face.
In British Columbia, and in other places like Iran and Cuba, the government competes against its “competitors” — its own private citizens in business. And it’s happening all across Canada.
In BC, it is this optional insurance coverage which private companies are left with to compete against for profits. The optional insurance aftermarket includes such things as extra, optional insurance coverage above and beyond the mandatory basic insurance, for which ICBC has an absolute, state-mandated monopoly. Just like in communist countries. This includes extra collision coverage and the likes of windshield replacement coverage and towing packages and such. The state-owned ICBC is not lowering their monopoly basic rates insurance rates, which they of course could, just the “competitive” optional insurance rates.
“We are disappointed but not surprised that our competitors are complaining about ICBC lowering rates for customers. … In addition, our competitors are complaining about the profits we are earning.This net income is kept within the company and provides some “shelter from the storm” to protect our customers during these volatile economic times.”
—Jon Schubert, President, ICBC.
That doesn’t sound capitalist to me. Does it to you? That sounds like government competing against its own citizens, and then using their government bully pulpit to harangue and browbeat citizens who dare to compete and complain about the government competition. And that sounds like liberal fascism or socialism, or something other than free-market capitalism, to me. Please provide me with the word to use to describe that other than liberal fascism or socialism or both. Because I’d love to not have to use those terms. I’d love to think this isn’t happening in my country rather than in, say, Venezuela or Cuba or the old Soviet Union.
“Corporation” is a cute word that increasingly socialist governments in Canada use to describe what are actually branches of government, which often compete against their own citizens, and of course in so doing, turn citizens off of actual corporations operating in a free capitalist market. It purposely blurs the lines and confuses the electorate. It’s Orwellian. And it’s working. Citizens now sue the likes of the BC Lottery “Corporation” for misdeeds just as they sue any “corporation”, and claim in their explanation for their lawsuits that “It’s about keeping corporations honest, that’s really what it’s about.” That was what a plaintiff was actually quoted as saying, in a recent article.
The insurance “corporation” of BC made a “profit” of in excess of a HALF A BILLION DOLLARS last year. It made even more the year before.
Private, citizen-owned companies (actual corporations) are ever-so-graciously allowed by the benevolent government (Liberal Party, in BC) to compete against the (über socialist NDP-created) state-owned socialism-reliant government “corporation”—for the optional extras only. They are not allowed to compete for basic car insurance. Only the government can sell that. And yet the government cut rates only on the competitive side.
In other words, the state aims to grab even more of the private-sector’s income than they already do, thus probably running many (more) of them out of business or keeping them from entering the market completely, and certainly robbing citizens of profits which would normally be competitively earned in any free country with a free market.
In the earlier article in the Province, sub-headlined “Despite profits, monopoly, gov’t insurer won’t cut basic costs”, which so stirred the president of ICBC, the head of one of the companies daring—or bothering—to compete against their government for the scraps within the optional car insurance market, Colin Brown of Canadian Direct Insurance, dared ask, “Does that mean that only competition brings their prices down?”
Here’s another question, one which I often ask here at PTBC: What kind of government competes against its own citizens in business for profits? Or indeed competes against its own citizens for anything at all whatsoever. But he didn’t ask that.
In another citizen’s statement that the government-employed “corporate” “president” found so worthy of disdain, Maureen Bader of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said basic insurance should be going down. “They’re behaving in an anti-competitive manner. They’re reducing the amount of the optional coverage, making it more difficult for private competitors.”
Sure, cower and simply call it “anti-competitive”. That’s a term usually reserved for actual capitalist, free market competition or lack thereof. Microsoft, for example, was charged with being “anti-competitive” simply for using nefarious tactics to foist its well-earned success on consumers. But actually in this case it’s called SOCIALISM. And I think it’s an important distinction to make for taxpayers and voters.
What are these spokesmen afraid of? Their government? It seems so.
Serge Corbeil of the Insurance Bureau of Canada—seemingly timidly—suggested in the article:
“Where ICBC faces competition, they are able to drive down rates. Perhaps the same could apply if B.C. drivers were given the choice where they buy their basic insurance, as well.”
“One has to ask why two years in a row they’re able to reduce their optional coverage but not basic coverage.”
I think the time for this sort of timidity and politeness is long over. The time for a full-on revolt against governments that compete against their own citizens is overdue. It should never have gotten this far. How did we ever allow a situation in which the state competes against its own citizens? And how did we get to this place where we don’t dare criticize it using the actual terminology demanded? And when did it become acceptable for the government to then browbeat private citizens who dare speak out against its socialist (or worse) tactics, in newspapers’ letters to the editor?
It’s frightening to me.
Apparently we can no longer count on anybody aside from me to step up to the plate and point out the obvious: not the media, not the Taxpayers’ Federation, not the insurance bureaus.
This is how countries turn into socialist countries —countries obedient to their masters in government. I’ll have none if it.
More reading: other related blog entries and columns on this here at PTBC:
• Media, governments: blurring lines between socialism in Canada, and private enterprise
• More blurring of lines: abject socialism (state-owned and run—shhh! “corporations”); and real ones
• Canadians now totally indoctrinated?: line fully blurred between private corporations and state
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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