----No- Fault Billboards

FTLComm - Estevan - August 26, 2000

The struggle against Saskatchewan's no-fault insurance program continues as the coalition has erected signs as you enter Saskatchewan on Highway #1 from Alberta, on the Yellowhead on the Alberta side and at the Estevan border crossing with North Dakota. No billboards are slated for the Manitoba side of the province because Manitoba has system is similar. Tourism from the United States into Canada has been steady this year with the Canadian dollar's continued weakness and surprisingly lower gasoline prices in much of Canada in comparison with some parts of the US. Americans are not strangers to no-fault insurance as so many states have this system, but unlike Canada, there is a steady trend to move away from no-fault insurance because it is responsible for escalating the cost of vehicle insurance while at the same time continuing to reward bad drivers. Perhaps the major difference between the US no-fault situation and that which we are faced with in Canada is that agencies like SGI and Workers Compensation have found that they can milk the publicly funded Medicare system rather than accept responsibility for accident and work related treatment to injured victims. We all take for granted that we have universal Medicare and do not realise that one of the reasons it is being endangered is because of abuse by government and government agencies. Saskatchewan's own department of health has promoted its "wellness model" which is in effect a means of moving people from medical hospital care to uncovered medical care in the home. It is surprising that these games are played, played with people's lives and health all for the sake of a few bucks here and there. Workers Compensation has prided itself in its out and out lack of responsibility for injured workers who so frequently end up on welfare and the public has to pay for their treatment while the Compensation Board cheerfully refunds 80 million dollars each year to business. SGI is just playing this same public purse shift by reducing the claims to accident victims who receive treatment under publicly funded Medicare all the while SGI hires a horde of investigators and claim deniers to keep their costs down, but as we have seen each year their rates have continued to rise simply because no-fault costs everyone more. The shifting of cost with no-fault insurance is remarkably deceptive SGI's inhumanitarian treatment of accident victims loads up welfare and Medicare costs indirectly because these individuals need help and when SGI cuts them off or causes them undue stress the care and treatment costs actually escalate to the public at large. Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the SGI PPIP system is that SGI workers, the adjusters and private investigators they employ are willing to act as defacto torturers. Studies have been done to see why normally reasonable and sane people would hurt other people and it was discovered that most people can set aside their morals, their humanity and common sense and act on behalf of a company or the commanding officer to inflict pain and suffering on others. Because of SGI's operational system I think that it is the responsibility of us who are not involved in torture and denial of treatment to the injured, to stand up and condemn individually those who work for SGI. If a company, or government is acting immorally each and every individual working for that operation shares in the crimes that they collectively commit and to ignore that is to ourselves participate in the injustice. The collective bad behaviour of Workers Compensation and SGI must be condemned and if our elected officials refuse to improve things, and Premier Romanow has shown over and over that he is in favour the behaviour of both these agencies, then we must on an individual basis, demonstrator our repugnance for SGI employees and those would do the dirty work for Workers Compensation. Any person working for these agencies has only two choices, find work elsewhere or refuse to carry out inhumanitarian acts, to do otherwise is collaboration and unacceptable in a civilised society.