NDP Introduces bill to end auto insurance postal code discrimination

NDP MPP Gurratan Singh is introducing a bill Monday that will end automobile insurance discrimination in the GTA, lowering prices for thousands of GTA families.

Singh’s bill amends the Insurance Actto prevent insurance companies from charging GTA residents different insurance rates solely because of where they live within the region — or face the penalties set out by theInsurance Act.

“Drivers in the Peel region and other parts of the GTA pay significantly higher auto insurance rates than others in the same region, for no good reason,” said Singh. “In the last year alone, my community of Brampton has seen premiums increase at a rate nearly five times higher than the provincial average, and the average Brampton driver’s annual premiums are nearly $1,000 more than the average driver in much of Toronto.”

Instead of protecting drivers in the GTA from this gouging, Doug Ford and his government is taking things from bad to worse. A Financial Services Commission of Ontario report says that as soon as Doug Ford’s Conservatives got elected, they paved the way for a nine per cent premium increase in July.

Singh pointed to families like Tom Levac’s as an example of how wrong the gouging is.

“Tom is a Brampton teacher who has lived in Brampton his whole life. He has a clean driving record with no accidents. When Tom moved away from Brampton to Orangeville, he saw his monthly rate drop immediately to $76 from $325. That’s $2,988 a year.

“GTA families like Tom’s are being ripped off to the tune of thousands a year, merely because if their postal codes. It’s wrong, and it has to stop. It really doesn’t have to be this way.”

Singh’s bill will require the Superintendent of the Financial Services Commission of Ontario to refuse to approve risk classification systems that don’t consider the GTA as a single geographic area, and prohibit insurers from entering into contracts with insurance rates based on such a risk classification system. If passed, this bill will end years of Liberal and Conservative government policies that have put the interests of private auto insurance companies ahead of the people of Ontario.

The bill will be introduced in the legislature on Monday afternoon at approximately 1:30 p.m.