Dave, ICBC and WC Pay-as-you-go-locks - Alcyonenews

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Posted March 9, 2018

Dave, ICBC and WC Pay-as-you-go-locks

In the previous two issues I wrote about Dave Barrett and the ICBC, respectively. Now I will write about both, a short story for each.

Mainstream media, up to the CBC, spread the word about Judge Milman awarding a $Million to Rene Gauthier who in 2013, while riding a motorcycle was hit by a car. This was bad, but would have been forgotten for it hardly left any scars on the individuals involved, according to the judgement. Gauthier had a marvelous recovery and is now as good a surfer as he was before the accident. But the Judge took his word on that.

“Over the next several months, he [Guathier] noticed that something else was missing. He could no longer see the ‘keystone’ - the solution to the problems he was facing used to be immediately apparent to him before” Judge Milman wrote.

A pilot told me how bad flying is with a pilot who is “in the middle of a divorce”. Well, Gauthier was facing bankruptcy at the time of the accident.

But “What is a $Million?” once C.D. Howe asked in the House down there in Ottawa. Well, the ICBC average yearly auto insurance policy costs $1,150. Deduct broker’s commission and ICBC overhead, say $250 per policy, then to pay Gauthier that $Million for being so fortunate as he was, ICBC must sell some 1,100 policies. Yes, 1,100 of us would pay to the ICBC, the “average” policy fee, because a judge with a stoke of his ballpoint shifted to Gauthier all that cash from our pockets. This was in my mind when I wrote that the “arsonists” who made ICBC “a dumpster on fire” are on the loose.

After the Gauthier $Million, what could possibly be fair compensation for people crippled for life in auto accidents? I do not know, but pray they are fairly treated. The media reported this $Million because it is at wide variance from reason and because it is big. But it if it can happen once, it can happen, and if anything can go wrong, it will.

Now I will move on to another labour of Dave Barrett, his battle to open the doors of the nations washrooms to all in need to go, be we poor or rich. It was early in his premiership, that he legislated the abolition of pay-locks on the washroom doors. Actually, he did it only in BC because this is provincial jurisdiction. But, after getting whiff of what was happening in BC the other premiers, fearing massive doorcrashing, rose to the occasion and freedom spread all over the nation.

At the time I wrote a piece to celebrate the victoria over the capitalists who were brutally exploiting a fundamental human needs to enrich themselves. I made a story about it and published it, I do not remember where. It went like this: One day Dave was downtown and realized he had to go. He went but only as far as the washroom door - he did not have a dime, he discovered, and without it he could not do what he had to do. So he begged until someone took pity on him and lent him a dime. But by that time was a bit late and this resulting in a drycleaning bill. Then he took revenge on the washroom door moguls, to the blessed relief of the populace.

A reader doubted my store and I assured her, with a straight face, that yes it was a real story. Then under more strenuous interpolation I admitted to have changed the names to protect the guilty, but she would not relent until she got it all from me. I admitted to having being victimised by a kid -scalper who sold me a dime for a buck - “Bucks” were paper then for the Loonie had yet to come. Then I realized she has got me too far and invoked the fifth as they say south of the border. Enough said...

Tom Varzeliotis