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FEBRUARY 7, 2018 | Volume 31 No. 11
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MLA Todd Stone dismisses mass DQ of memberships ANDREA KLASSEN
STAFF REPORTER
andrea@kamloopsthisweek.com
KTW FILE PHOTO Automobile accidents, like this crash in Kamloops in February 2017, and their associated costs have led to plenty of red ink at ICBC. The provincial government has announced plans to stem the bleeding.
B.C. NDP unveils changes to ICBC SEAN BRADY
STAFF REPORTER
sbrady@kamloopsthisweek.com
Changes expected to save $1 billion per year are coming to the province’s public auto insurer. Beginning in April 2019, ICBC will limit minor injury claims made for pain and suffering to $5,500 — the same type of claims that have ballooned from an average of $5,000 in 2000 to more than $16,000 in 2016.
Attorney General David Eby made the announcement in Victoria late Tuesday morning as part of the NDP government’s attempt to stave off further losses for the Crown corporation, which is expected to be $1.3 billion in the red this year. The new plan for ICBC also includes changes to accident benefits, including a doubling of the lifetime limit to $300,000, increasing the amount covered for treatments, increasing the variety of treatments available
and doubling wage loss payments to $740 per week. In addition, the Civil Resolution Tribunal, an independent body that currently adjudicates strata and small claims disputes, will soon also be used to handle certain motor vehicle claims. Eby has called the situation a “dumpster fire” and blames the previous B.C. Liberal government for its mismanagement. See GOOD DRIVERS, A6
Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Todd Stone said he doesn’t think a controversy that saw more than 1,300 new members signed up by his campaign disqualified is responsible for his loss. “I’m disappointed because I was really proud of the campaign we ran and all the people that worked so hard. But we came up a little bit short and now we have to all move forward,” said Stone, who lost to fellow former cabinet minister Andrew Wilkinson. Wilkinson defeated former Conservative MP Dianne Watts in a fifth round of vote counting. Stone was eliminated earlier in the ballot system that saw the last-place candidate dropped after each round of counting if the leader did not earn enough points from the province’s 87 ridings (each awarding 100 points based on the proportion of votes) to reach the 50 per cent mark. The contenders were eliminated in this order: Sam Sullivan, Michael de Jong, Todd Stone, Michael Lee and Dianne Watts. Stone’s campaign was rocked on Friday, Feb. 2 — the second day of three days of online and telephone
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voting — when it admitted that 1,394 membership sign-ups were rejected by the party due to their attachment to fake email addresses. Peter Fassbender, Stone’s campaign co-chair, told the Vancouver Sun that a company hired by the campaign, AggregateIQ, had created the emails to fill in missing information on new membership applications, mainly from non-English speaking Chinese and Indo-Canadian residents in the Lower Mainland. Stone maintained his campaign had not committed any wrongdoing, adding he does not regret hiring AggregateIQ, which is also under investigation by the United Kingdom information commissioner for its social media targeting of Brexit voters during the U.K.’s referendum on European Union membership. AggregateIQ was paid $5.75 million for its work in helping the leave-EU side, which prevailed in the June 2016 referendum. “The people who signed up were real people who had paid money, their own money, who had signed up to participate in the process,” said Stone, who repeated the phrase “real people” multiple times in his interview with KTW. See WILKINSON, A6
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