False Advertising

Yeah made a commitment to be delivered in 2009,or 2010 or maybe 2011....




As for a plan they have no plan...except to get re-elected...

Stelmach's sophomore-year throne speech will try to further convince voters he has a clear plan, contrary to the ominous whispers of "no plan" in union-funded ads that have run on TV for weeks.

The premier whispered back, "We have a plan" in a news conference last week, and now Kwong will reiterate that message on his behalf.

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Insurance Woes and Whines

Insurance firms feel profit pinch
Industry giants blame roiling markets, high loonie for dampening fourth-quarter earnings and outlook

Sez the headline. But the reality is that it has less to do with the loonie, and more about their investments in the U.S. including of course their exposure to the sub-prime credit mess. Ah the joys of global capitalism. The reason that banks want to merge of course is to compete for positions in the global financial markets, that is the U.S. market. And this is what happens when they do.....

Manulife is Canada's largest insurer. Approximately 64 per cent of its earnings are generated in the United States and Asia. Smaller rival Sun Life faces a similar predicament with about 52 per cent of its earnings originating from the U.S., U.K. and Asia.

For the October-December quarter, Sun Life reported earnings of $555 million or 97 cents per share. That compared with net income of $545 million or 94 cents per share for the same period in 2006. "This quarter was also marked by significant market turbulence," McKenney said.

Chief executive Donald Stewart said that volatility would likely affect the industry's outlook in the near term. Echoing those sentiments, Manulife CEO Dominic D'Alessandro suggested that "unsettled markets" would likely affect wealth businesses.

Sun Life also disclosed it has $84 million in direct exposure and $961 million in indirect exposure to monoline bond insurers. Those companies, which provide insurance against default in securitized debt, have become a source of worry because certain firms have had their credit ratings downgraded.

Chief investment officer Jim Anderson said Sun Life's direct exposure to monolines is with two insurers that are "AAA rated with a stable outlook." Its indirect exposure is to insurers with "investment grade" ratings, adding most of its exposure is in the U.K.

Insurance companies used to be the most risk adverse and conservative of financial institutions. However with the shift to globalization of the marketplace in the eighties and nineties from production to FIRE (financial services, insurance, real estate,) this all changed. A renewed financial market dominated the market, as it once had prior to WWI, the result of this financial exuberance, and shift from investment in production to investment in investment instruments bailed out New York and London from their Reagan/Thatcher excesses and declines. In doing so insurance companies as well as the banks and other financial businesses exposed themselves to the dangers of the balloon and bust market. Chickens, home, roost.

Just as people meet and authorize someone from among their own number to take specific action on their behalf, so commodities must meet to authorize a single commodity to confer full or partial citizenship in the world of commodities. The act of exchange is the occasion for such a meeting of commodities. The social activity of commodities on the market is to capitalist society what collective intelligence is to a socialist society. The consciousness of the bourgeois world is concentrated in the market report. It is only after the successful completion of the exchange that the individual can have any insight into the process as a whole, or any guarantee that his product has satisfied a social need, as well as the incentive to begin his production anew. The object which is thus authorized by the common action of commodities to express the value of all other commodities is – money. The authority of this particular commodity develops along with the development of the exchange of commodities.

Finance Capital, Hilferding 1910

SEE:

Lenin Was Right

Petro Dollars Bail Out The CITI

Bank Smack Down

U.S. Economy Entering Twilight Zone

Lenin's State Monopoly Capitalism

40 Years Later; The Society of the Spectacle

Commodity Fetish a Definition

State Capitalism in the USSR

Plutocrats Rule

The Right To Be Greedy

Social Credit And Western Canadian Radicalism

It's the Labour Theory of Value, stupid

China: The Truimph of State Capitalism

Deconstructing Hayek

Social Insecurity- The Phony Pension Crisis


tags
taylorism,fordism, NEP, state capitalism, state monopoly capitalism, monopoly capitalism,

liberalism, state, Anarcho-Capitalism, libertarian, Von Mises,anarchism,, gold bug,, gold,, Albert J. Nock,
Bemjamin Tucker, Liberty, libertarian, anarchism, invdidualist-anarchist, Rothbard, Austrian School of Economics, mutualism,
homes, mortgages, housing, bubble, US, economy, Canada, sub-prime mortgage, Wall Street, crash, recession,
China, Greenspan, correction, capitalism, Rothbard, Keynes, Galbraith, stocks, markets, capitalism

Sun Love In With NDP

Is subversive socialism creeping into the Sun Editorial Room. After all their new marketing slogan smacks of Bolshevism; Read Red. Red being their banner colour.

And they are saying nice things about Brian Mason and the NDP after Brian met with them yesterday.

When Mason appeared yesterday to talk to the Sun's editorial board he didn't seem to have any blood-sucking socialist fangs and wasn't wearing a red beret.

Instead, he wore a tie and jacket and patiently outlined a policy platform aimed at what ex-premier Ralph Klein dubbed severely normal Albertans.

Kerry Diotte, a transplanted Ontario libertarian, gushes again over Brian and the NDP.

There's long been an innate fear of socialism here and it has been reflected by the poor showing by NDP candidates who run federally and provincially.

That's why it's got to be frustrating for a guy like Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason, who's the most charismatic of the three major party leaders contesting the March 3 provincial election.

Which is why he falls into the revisionist right wing myth that Alberta fears socialism. Which is contradicted by the historical fact that Western Canadian Socialism was given birth here with the strikes of miners who belonged to the IWW in Medicine Hat and Lethbridge. Again in 1919 with the founding Convention of the One Big Union in Calgary, during the Winnipeg General Strike, organized by the Socialist Party of Canada. And later with the founding of the CCF in Calgary in the 1920's, not as some mistakenly believe in Regina.. Albertans embraced socialism even in its later distributionist right wing variant; Social Credit.

Neil Waugh gushed this week over Brian as well.

There was nothing about a Liberal-style assault on the oilsands for Our Brian, clearly a friend of the working man and woman, or at least not for now. Heck, he even wants to charge a bitumen removal "barrel tax" to force oilsands outfits to upgrade their production here.

Then today Waugh joins in with a clarion call of pending class war because of Big Oil's finger puppet Ed Stelmach. Suddenly Waugh is sounding like more like Lenin than Ayn Rand.

That was all before Canadian National Resources Ltd.'s $2-billion oilsands overrun suddenly appeared to bite the Tories this week.

With only 10% of the Horizon oil sands plant at Fort McMurray still to build, the costs mysteriously soared 28% in what the company blurb called the "toughest, most labour intensive portion" of the controversial project controlled by Calgary billionaire Murray Edwards.

"Unfortunately, mid to late January and early February saw a significant deterioration of labour productivity on the site," company brass lamented.

The reason was "much colder than normal weather seriously curtailed activity."

Who knew that it sometimes hits -40 C at Fort Mac in the winter? When in doubt, blame the workers and the weather.

But it won't be CNRL shareholders picking up the extra $2 billion. Somebody messed up big time and tried to build the biggest piece of the project in brass monkey weather.

In all likelihood, Alberta taxpayers will once again bite the bullet.

Even under Stelmach's new royalty deal (a strangely forgotten part of the PC campaign), oilsands outfits still only pay pennies on the dollar until the massive plants are paid out. Then the royalty jumps to a more reasonable rate of 25% to 40%, depending on oil prices.

Energy department spokesman Jason Chance insisted that any additional costs "would have to be validated and determined whether they are appropriate. It's based on what the reality is."

The sweet deal CNRL got from the Tories for Horizon allowed the company to tear up the oilsands labour construction deal and broke the peace that ruled in the oilsands for the last quarter century. It touched off last fall's Hard Hat Flu walkouts.

This resulted in the "No Plan" Stelmach attack ads backed by the Alberta Building Trades Council.

These took a turn for the bizarre last weekend when the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees' brass, after "extensive debate," voted to kick in $300,000 to the TV spots, meaning government workers are now attacking their own work.

Meanwhile Employment Minister Iris Evans continues to sit on the probe into CNRL's all-fall-down tank farm, where two Chinese foreign temporary workers were crushed to death.

"The chickens are coming home to roost for Mr. Stelmach," Mason chuckled, calling for a "special unit" of government auditors to "validate and verify" CNRL's cost-overrun claims.

Or is Klein's political ghost now haunting Eddie's campaign bus?

Mason also met with the Liberal Edmonton Journal editorial board. And again a fair gushing ensued over the only charismatic politician in the race. Mason was the winner in the 2000 race, and the NDP has made the transition from being a decimated party in 1993 to rising from the ashes in 1997 to winning four seats in 2004. And in each of those elections the NDP was a new party with new directions and new leaders who appealed to the public.

Albertans should be grateful the competent, thoughtful, personable likes of Brian Mason is willing to fight the uphill battle, to make the case for New Democrat MLAs in the legislature at election time, and to stoke debate on issues such as health care each time the Tories introduce one of their numbered "ways" of challenging the public system.

Do the NDs have a place in the next legislature?

That's a decision voters -- in practice, Edmonton voters -- must decide as they balance their desire for change in government offices, their recognition that our new Edmonton-area premier already constitutes change from the Calgary-centric Klein past, and their admiration for stands of principle by people like Mason and his predecessors Raj Pannu and Pam Barrett.

But would this election be as valuable or as useful a forum of political renewal and debate without Mason's and the NDP's thoughtful perspective on issues?

It certainly would not.

The Edmonton media seems to have given Brian and the NDP an election bouquet of good wishes on Valentines Day.


SEE

Careful Of What You Ask For


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Costing Promises

Liberals Tories same old stories; make plenty of spending promises but leave the calculator at home.

Plenty of Promises, but Little Accounting

The Liberals and Progressive Conservatives are proving least accountable with public dollars when it comes to slapping price tags on their big-spending election promises, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation argued Wednesday.

The NDP proved to be most transparent with expenditure commitments. The party has attached sticker prices on two of the four applicable spending promises to date, totalling more than $2.1 billion annually, with most of that allocated to a green energy fund.

Taxpayers federation wants answers for big promises

Feb, 13 2008 - 3:50 PM

EDMONTON - The Canadian Taxpayers' Federation wants to see the bottom line of all the political parties who it says are making big spending promises in Alberta's provincial election campaign.

The group says it wants cost breakdowns from all parties of what their spending announcements are going to cost taxpayers.

So far during the campaign the federation says, the Alberta Liberals have made 40 different spending announcements, but have only given a cost breakdown for one.

It says the Alberta Tories have made 15 announcements and the NDP 13. The group says the NDP has costed all but two of its promises.

Scott Hennig, a spokesman for the group, says either some of the parties aren't being straight with taxpayers about what their promises will cost, or they run the province into debt trying to fulfil them.

He says the competition to see who can spend the most would only push a provincial government closer to a deficit. Hennig says the promises made by many of the parties are so vague, it's impossible to independently figure out how much they would cost.

(KH)

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Valentines Day Hour Of The Wolf

The ancient Roman orgiastic festival of Lupercalia, was transformed into St. Valentine by Christianity and then into Valentines Day by the English finally to become dominated by commercial American Greeting Card and Confectionery interests in the 19th Century.

The youths then donned loincloths made from the skin of the goat and led groups of priests around the pomarium, the sacred boundary of the ancient city, and around the base of the hills of Rome. The occasion was happy and festive. As they ran about the city, the young men lightly struck women along the way with strips of the goat hide. It is from these implements of purification, or februa, that the month of February gets its name. This act supposedly provided purification from curses, bad luck, and infertility.

LUPERCAʹLIA, one of the most ancient Roman festivals, which was celebrated every year in honour of Lupercus, the god of fertility. All the ceremonies with which it was held, and all we know of its history, shows that it was originally a shepherd-festival (Plut. Caes. 61). Hence its introduction at Rome was connected with the names of Romulus and Remus, the kings of shepherds. Greek writers and their followers among the Romans represent it as a festival of Pan, and ascribe its introduction to the Arcadian Evander. This misrepresentation arose partly from the desire of these writers to identify the Roman divinities with those of Greece, and partly from its rude and almost savage ceremonies, which certainly are a proof that the festival must have originated in the remotest antiquity. The festival was held every year, on the 15th of February,a in the Lupercal, where Romulus and Remus were said to have been nurtured by the she-wolf; the place contained an altar and a grove sacred to the god Lupercus (Aurel. Vict. de Orig. Gent. Rom. 22; Ovid. Fast. II.267). Here the Luperci assembled on the day of the Lupercalia, and sacrificed to the god goats and young dogs, which animals are remarkable for their strong sexual instinct, and thus were appropriate sacrifices to the god of fertility (Plut. Rom. 21; Servius ad Aen. VIII.343).b Two youths of noble birth were then led to the Luperci, and one of the latter touched their foreheads with a sword dipped in the blood of the victims; other Luperci immediately after wiped off the bloody spots with wool dipped in milk. Hereupon the two youths were obliged to break out into a shout of laughter. This ceremony was probably a symbolical purification of the shepherds. After the sacrifice was over, the Luperci partook of a meal, at which they were plentifully supplied with wine (Val. Max. II.2.9). They then cut the skins of the goats which they had sacrificed, into pieces; with some of which they covered parts of their body in imitation of the god Lupercus, who was represented half naked and half covered with goat-skin. The other pieces of the skins they cut into thongs, and holding them in their hands they ran through the streets of the city, touching or striking with them all persons whom they met in their way, and especially women, who even used to come forward voluntarily for the purpose, since they believed that this ceremony rendered them fruitful, and procured them an easy delivery in childbearing. This act of running about with thongs of goat-skin was a symbolic purification of the land, and that of touching persons a purification of men, for the words by which this act is designated are februare and lustrare (Ovid. Fast. II.31; Fest. s.v. Februarius). The goat-skin itself was called februum, the festive day dies februata, the month in which it occurred Februarius, and the god himself Februus.

Robert Esiner in his provocative study; Man into Wolf associates the Lupercalia leather eros and public S&M rituals with the modern phenomena of lycanthropy;werewolfism and vampirism. Which was brilliantly portrayed in the movie the Howling, one of the most under-valued cult werewolf films of the eighties.

MAN INTO WOLF 

AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION

OF SADISM, MASOCHISM, AND  LYCANTHROPY 

In analysing the basic factors leading to sadism and maso-
chism Dr. Eisler draws attention to what he describes as 'a feeble
sympathetic resonance', the lack of emotional response, the
insanity affecting altruistic feeling which forms so large a part
of the constitution some of us describe as the psychopathic per-
sonality. This, however, according to Eisler, is not simply a
throw-back to primeval savagery, for, as he shows, primitive
man in his primeval forest was not a killer but rather a peaceful
creature le bon sauvage. In confirmation of this fact the author
mentions numerous small tribes who have never as yet heard
of or encountered war. Killing and being killed has been a
developmental process whereby the carnivorous, predatory
packs, the ancestors of the hunting and game-seeking tribes,
have preyed on the vegetarian, frugivorous, peace-loving herds.
Eisler elaborates his theme by utilizing Jung's conception of
archetypal race memories. Such memories may be not only
ancestral, but may occur even in the sub-human animal strata

So this valentines day let your inner wolf out.



SEE:

A Little Eros For Valentine's Day

 Passover Song



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Black History Month Posts

Here we are half way through February and half way through Black History Month. Here are my posts from the past dedicated to Black History.

Black History Month; Paul Lafargue

Black History Month; P.B. Randolph

Black History Month; C.L.R. James

Black Herstory Month: Lucy Parsons

American Proletarian Republicanism

History Of Slave Ships

Abolishing Slavery In Canada

History of Slavery

The Truth Shall Set Ye Free

Jamestown; the beginning of Globalization

Jamestown; The Birth of Capitalism

The Many Headed Hydra

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CLR James,
Paul Lafargue,
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Lucy Parsons,
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Secularize the State

Voices: The Lord's Prayer
Toronto Star -
We asked if it was time to replace the Lord's Prayer in the Ontario Legislature with something that better reflects the province's diversity.
Ontario premier orders review of Lord's Prayer recital Canada.com
Ont. mulls alternatives to prayer in legislature CTV.ca

No need for an alternative all inclusive prayer, if they wanted that they could have used any one of several Freemason prayers.

"And since sin has destroyed within us the first temple of purity and innocence, may they heavenly grace guide and assist us in rebuilding a second temple of reformation, and may the glory of this latter house be greater than the glory of the former."
- Masonic prayer

After all the modern state is a Masonic institution ,according to the conspiracy theories of the social conservative Christian right and their Islamic counterparts, And this 'great beast'; this Leviathan is supposedly a secular state at war with Christianity and Islam.

The best way to insure inclusiveness is to not have any prayer, since it would not include atheists, or agnostics to say nothing of pagans and wiccans who remain an anathema to the hegemonic Abrahamic religions. To be truly inclusive opening prayers should be eliminated by all levels of government.

The modern secular state was the aim and objective originally of the Masonic influenced forces of the bourgeois revolutions in America and France.

Richard J. Purcell's Connecticut in Transition, 1775-1818 (Washington~ 1918; reissued by Wesleyan in 1963) is the best published work. Purcell, who also wrote an American history text for use in Catholic parochial schools, emphasizes the religious differences among competing Protestant sects as an impetus toward the development of political parties, the disestablishment of the Congregational church, and the separation of church and state in the Constitution of 1818.

Despite the ahistorical objections of the powers that be.



SEE:

Masonic Hall T.O.

1666 The Creation Of The World

The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

American Fairy Tale

Secular Democracy

Radical Robbie Burns, Peoples Poet

The Gnosis of Anarchy; Pagans, Witches, Heretics, and Luciferian Rebels


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Broken Promises

You can't break promises if you don't make any.

However, Stelmach wouldn't guarantee his government will continue natural gas rebates for all Albertans

On the other hand its bad news when you make a promise you know you can't keep.

The Tories couldn't seem to do anything right. When Stelmach promised to graduate more doctors from Alberta universities, for example, the doctors themselves said the idea won't work.

When he made an announcement at a Red Deer day care centre, some angry mothers who happened to be there berated the day-care promise as meaningless.

But it only gets worse when the only promise you can keep is that insurance premiums will go up because of your governments bad law.

Premier Ed Stelmach raised the spectre of rising auto-insurance premiums Monday, saying a recent court ruling that struck down the government's cap on payouts for soft-tissue injuries could result in higher costs for Alberta drivers.

"This may have tremendous pressure on (an) increase in rates," Stelmach said during a campaign stop in Edmonton.

The comments follow a claim by the Insurance Bureau of Canada, the industry's lobbying arm, that the Court of Queen's Bench ruling could increase premiums an average of $200 a year for every driver in the province

And then there are those promises your government made but failed to keep.

Neils Bach, 77, spoke for many residents of the Strathmore-Brooks riding when he begged Stelmach to start construction of a promised new 100-bed facility now.

"Mr. Stelmach, we need a new and much bigger nursing home in Strathmore. It's 15 years overdue."

Stelmach appeared moved by the plea, but couldn't give residents a specific date when construction will begin. "We'll get it built and we'll get it built as quickly as possible," he promised. "I really do empathize with your situation."

One elderly lady appeared exasperated by the delay.

"I sat in this room four years ago and heard there would be an extended-care facility open in spring 2007," said Madeline Scott.

"I'm a person of my word," the premier responded. "We allocated funds for a 100-bed facility. It's going to be built."

He said the funds have been approved and it's up to the health region to get the facility planned, designed and constructed. When he set out the process and time frame, one woman said she may not live that long.

Or making a promise sort of, maybe, sometime in the next four years we will do it if re-elected. When you could do it now with the swipe of a pen.

A former Member of Parliament from New Brunswick has launched a public battle against the Alberta's government's policy of charging monthly premiums for health care.

Gilles Bernier, who once served as MP for the riding of Tobique-Mactaquac, moved to Alberta in 2006 to start his own business. After applying for an Alberta health care card, he was surprised to find a $45 monthly fee attached. Bernier has refused to pay these premiums on principle because he says paying for health care violates the Canada Health Care Act.

"Under federal legislation, Canadians are entitled to receive free, basic health care," Bernier said. "Charging for health care contravenes the spirit of the Act and it puts our universal health care system in jeopardy. At the same time, it sets up a two-tiered system. Canadians in other provinces do not pay the fees or premiums that residents of Alberta are paying. Many citizens of this province are not aware of this and they are shocked to find it out. Like me, they feel betrayed by this government and unfair health care policy."

Now that a provincial election has been called, Bernier said the time is right to take the issue into the public forum. As the election campaign gets underway, the incumbent Conservatives of Alberta have suddenly promised to abolish the controversial health care premiums in four years.

"They know it is an issue with voters, especially new voters," Bernier said. "But four years is too long to wait for the health care Albertans should be receiving -- the same system provided to other Canadians. Health care premiums should be abolished the day after the election, not in 2012. If this election is about leadership, then Premier Stelmach should show leadership and repeal his government's policy of charging for basic health care. The decision is his to make if he wants to win this election."

Tags
Alberta, Premier, Ed Stelmach,
election,PC, politics, Conservatives,media, politics, Alberta election,

Ed's Politics Of Fear

With a green plan that makes the Federal Conservative government Hot Air Plan look good, hard to do, Farmer Ed now resorts to the politics of fear claiming that any green plan other than his non plan would end up with mass unemployment of everyone in the oil business in Alberta.

Seriously. Every single person working in the oil patch would be laid off if Alberta attempted to reduce our carbon footprint.

And again he has no proof for his assertions that the sky would fall. Oops.

"Our plan is real, is achievable and some of the commitments made by some of the leaders of the other parties would destroy 335,000 jobs," Stelmach claimed. "There's 600,000 new Albertans in this province. You want to send them back home to other provinces, other countries?"

When pressed by reporters after the encounter, Stelmach could not cite a source for the figure, which he has repeated throughout the campaign, but said there are multiple reports that have reached the same conclusion. Last week, the Tories suggested that's every job in the oilpatch.

The contentious issue at hand is a Tory policy on greenhouse-gas emissions that would see the province begin curbing carbon emissions by 2020 and decrease the 14% from 2005 levels by 2050, about 6% and 30 years behind federal targets. It has been roundly criticized by environmental groups.

The Stelmach government unveiled a new climate change plan Thursday that allows Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions to rise until 2020, and puts the province on a collision course with Ottawa over whose strategy takes precedence.

The Alberta plan -- which falls well short of what's demanded by both the Kyoto Protocol and the federal government -- was welcomed by the oil and gas industry as a good first step. But it was immediately panned by environmental groups and opposition parties.

It's the politics of fear. Which is the politics of a loser, with a loser environmental policy that makes no demands on the industry but puts the onus on individual Albertan's.

In fact it is not his plan nor even an Alberta plan, it is big oil's plan.

At the centre of the oil and gas sector's proposal is a plan to capture and store about one million tonnes of carbon emissions a year from natural gas. That would account for about 17 per cent of the sector's total emissions.

The proposal is still subject to feasibility studies, the industry admits, and its officials would not say whether it could be in place by the 2020 deadline. They also warned that the plan will likely be costly.

David Pryce, vice-president of western operations for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said more reductions could be found through waste-heat recovery, fuel efficiency programs and the elimination of gas flaring.

SEE

Liberals Empty Promises

Made in Alberta Green Plan



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environment,, Baird,, Stelmach,, tarsands,, oil sands,, Kyoto,, Alberta, Canada, Conservatives, Harper, politics, green house gas, climate change, global warming Alberta, Premier, Ed Stelmach,election,PC, politics, Conservatives,Alberta election,

Time For Public Auto Insurance

This decision couldn't have come at a better time. Once again the Tired Old Tories tried to pull the auto insurance companies fat out of the fire and in doing so of course passed a law that blamed the victims.

Taking a page out of the Republican handbook about tort law cases, and blaming trial lawyers, the Tories capped claims rather than doing anything about out of control profiteering by the insurance companies.

That law was tossed out last Friday. Already we could be seeing increases in insurance premiums while a public insurance program would actually save Albertan's hundreds of dollars per person.

The insurance industry has suggested that if the legislation is not eventually upheld, it could lead to a rate increase of $200 a year per policy holder.

Of course the Tories will appeal this decision wasting more taxpayers money and solving nothing but doing the bidding of their masters; the insurance companies. And it means they will try to kill it as an election issue. But they will be as successful with that as with their appeal.

A senior Tory official confirms that candidates have been sent a letter telling them they're not supposed to talk about the auto insurance issue since it's before the courts. (The Canadian Press)

It would have been a perfect political day for Stelmach, had a curious e-mail not arrived in my in-box.

The e-rocket was from "Alberta Progressive Conservative Campaign Headquarters" and PC candidates were ordered to "delete and destroy any copies."

In it the "Campaign Team" reminded them of last week's court decision ruling Ralph Klein's flawed auto insurance reforms "unconstitutional" and warned candidates they "must not comment on this decision."

It isn't hard to understand the political sensitivity over the goof, especially after the premier admitted yesterday that "there may be tremendous pressure on increasing rates."

Neil Waugh, Edmonton Sun.

The plaintiffs in the court challenge argued that the insurance industry in Alberta had manufactured the premium crisis by raising rates unnecessarily. They entered evidence into court that showed the insurance companies never lost money in the province; to the contrary, by the time the legislation was enacted in 2004 the insurance industry was well on its way to reaping record profits.

During the court case, Dennis Gartner, the province's superintendent of insurance during the reforms, admitted under oath that the government had no way of knowing how much money insurance companies were making.

After years of waffling, the Klein government finally acted on the controversy in 2004, imposing a $4,000 cap on soft-tissue-injury claims. Since then, personal injury lawyers among others have argued that the ruling -- seen as a sop to the well-connected private insurance lobby -- robbed many accident victims of their basic Charter rights.

Needless to say, the government disagreed, maintaining that its reforms helped all Albertans and didn't affect anyone's liberty. Furthermore, it rejected out of hand the notion that high premiums be tackled with a public auto-insurance scheme, ironically at a time B.C.'s conservative Campbell government was abandoning talk of privatizing the Insurance Corporation of B.C, having discovered that public insurance seemed to work best for taxpayers.

But last Friday, Alberta Court of Queen's Bench Justice Neil Wittmann exploded the $4,000 cap, deeming it unconstitutional. As well, he found the existing Minor Injury Regulation discriminates against a specific group of injured Albertans. Wittmann didn't mince words, either, summarily rejecting the government's contention that the legislation was designed to help victims.

Instead, he ruled, the so-called reforms unfairly sacrificed a single group of Albertans "at the altar of reducing insurance premiums."

Now, as anyone financially responsible for a teenager appreciates, the word "high" didn't do justice to premiums faced by some drivers under the old system. "Astronomical" was closer to the mark, and the relief spurred on by the 2004 legislation has been welcome. But the premium grid that did most of the work of changing such inequities is itself unlikely to be affected by Wittmann's ruling.

There will be no waiting period, as requested by the Stelmach government.

Alberta Finance has announced it is studying the ruling, but that shouldn't take long. As of today, the $4,000 cap is no more. Indeed, virtually every argument put forward by the cap-smashing plaintiffs was accepted by the court.

Without the law - and its rate-increase controls - in place the public faces the prospect of increased insurance premiums, Premier Ed Stelmach said Monday.

But opponents decried the government's stance, noting the ruling also clearly indicates that the insurance industry was enjoying record profits at the time and had everything to do with charging the public for bad long-term investments, said NDP Leader Brian Mason.

Mason's party has pledged to introduce public insurance if elected March 3, noting that the most recent Canadian Consumers Association study shows a public system like that in B.C. would save the average Alberta motorist about $400 per year.

"The premier can run from this, but he can't hide," said Mason. "He allowed an industry that was making record profits to run roughshod over the public and to deny injured Albertans their basic rights."

'SCREWED THE PEOPLE'

"Eventually this will come home to roost ... the government clearly screwed the people and took the side of big insurance over Alberta families."

Tags
Alberta, Premier, Ed Stelmach,
election,PC, politics, Conservatives,media, politics, Alberta election,auto insurance
Conservatives,NDP, public auto insurance