Mr. Feehan: Now, what we have heard the Finance minister say is that we need to leave this to the market, and the market will, you know, deal with this. There will be competition in the market, more companies will join, and we’ll see the rates go down. But this is not a normal open market, and I think we have to be really clear about that. There are only approximately 45 companies in the province of Alberta, and I know the minister is hoping more will join, but what is he hoping? That two, three, four, five more will join? He hasn’t actually stood up and said to this House that when we reach a thousand insurance companies then we will have true market competition, because he knows that will never happen.
He also knows that in a market the size of 45 you actually don’t have fulsome competition. You don’t have fulsome competition because the companies are quite able to work together. I’m not talking about collusion. I’m not talking about a dishonest, you know, sort of under-the-table kind of working together. I mean that they just understand each other and understand how things work. So they all raise the rates knowing that it will be supported across the board because there is no real competition. There is no one standout company, for example, in the last year who said: “Has your insurance gone up 30 per cent? Well, we’re going to give you not only an insurance rate that doesn’t go up 30 per cent, but we’re going to drop it by 5 or 10 per cent.” Not one company made that advertisement, so that tells you that they all rose with the market.
What happens in these situations, that the Conservatives do not speak to, is the fact that the lives of individual Albertans are driven into chaos. Even if they are right and eventually somewhere down in this magical future competition will result in some reduction of the bills, in the meantime the people of the province of Alberta have experienced extreme distress. Some, as I say, have had to make really critical decisions in terms of their personal finances or their small-business finances. Unfortunately, the Conservatives’ answer is always, “Don’t worry; this will resolve itself in due time,” this being the in-due-time government.
I think what that says is: “Well, you know what? Those of us who have wealth will ride through this because it really won’t make a huge difference in our lives, and those of you who don’t have wealth can just suffer the consequences because in due time it’ll be okay again.” Two years of trauma in terms of being unable to pay your bills is really unacceptable, yet it doesn’t matter to this Conservative government.
