Industry Committee on Nov. 27th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Members, I'll ask you to please take your seats. We are here at the fifth meeting of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. The orders today are pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a review of Canada's service sector.

We have three organizations with us today. The first organization is the Insurance Bureau of Canada, with the president and chief executive officer, Mark Yakabuski. We have two representatives from the Canadian Bankers Association: Nancy Hughes Anthony, president and chief executive officer, and the vice-president for policy, Mr. Terry Campbell. We also have a third organization, the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association Incorporated, with the president, Mr. Frank Swedlove. I believe, Mr. Swedlove, you'll be with us until 10:30 this morning, as you have to catch a flight. We have the vice-president, taxation and research, James Witol, and senior vice-president of Quebec affairs, Mr. Yves Millette.

Welcome to all of you. We will start with the Insurance Bureau of Canada. We will start with presentations of up to ten minutes by each organization, and then we will go into questions from members. We'll start with Mr. Yakabuski.

[Mark Yakabuski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Insurance Bureau of Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for the invitation to appear before this committee. First of all, I want to congratulate you for undertaking this review of Canada's service sector.

The service industries in Canada are a huge employer. The total service sector employment in Canada now ranks at about 78.6% of total employment. But oddly enough, the services sector in general in Canada contributes only 69.7% of Canada's GDP. What does that mean? It means Canada's service sector is not as productive as other parts of the economy. Mr. Chairman, I think the challenge of this committee, and indeed of this Parliament, is to take all necessary measures to ensure that productivity in the services sector in general, and particularly the financial services sector, can be improved.

I imagine that very few of you know that there are 215 property and casualty insurers in Canada.

There are 215 licensed property and casualty insurers in Canada. I'm very proud to represent this sector. We have a premium volume of almost $36 billion currently. The industry is healthy, with a return on equity last year of about 17%, but it's always the future you have to be looking out for.

We are a very large employer in Canada, employing almost 108,000 people. That employment is spread across the country in both large businesses and small. We invest about $80 billion in government and high-grade corporate bonds across the country, and we are a huge contributor to the public fiscal health.

The property and casualty insurance industry alone contributed $6.5 billion in 2006 to the federal and provincial governments across Canada. So it's a healthy industry, and it's also an industry that you want to keep healthy if you want to have those tax revenues maintained at that level.

Having said that, I think there are a few things I'd want to bring to your attention, Mr. Chairman. There are, if I can put it this way, two really critical challenges moving forward in the years ahead.

One is that Canada's regulatory system for its financial institutions, particularly its property and casualty insurers, has to keep pace with that of other major insurance markets. We are not doing so currently. Canada is ranked 11 out of 80 countries in terms of the highest effective tax rate on capital, according to the C.D. Howe Institute.

The United States, which was long a laggard in good regulation of financial institutions, has over the last decade, one might argue, catapulted above Canada in terms of having a more efficient regulatory system. We have more regulation of insurance prices and insurance products in Canada than any other major OECD country. I think it's something that governments and regulators across the country have to pay some attention to.

I also want to bring your attention, Mr. Chairman, and that of this committee to a very serious issue. We have seen more discussion of it in the media over the last couple of days, but I can tell you it won't be the last of the discussion. That is the critical need in this country to invest in very basic infrastructure, in particular our water and sewage systems. There is, probably with the exception of the new subdivisions in Calgary, no city in this country that does not have a decaying water and sewage system. These systems were designed to take rain loads that were planned back in the 1930s and 1940s. I can tell you that today, whatever your view happens to be on the causes of climate change, the fact of the matter is that climate change is with us. The damages associated with climate change will grow more severe as the years pass.

There is no such thing, in my opinion and in the opinion of our industry, as a sound climate change policy that does not have a robust plan for adapting to climate change. The greatest challenge we face is to adapt to climate change. The reality, Mr. Chairman, is that if we were to decommission every coal-fired plant tomorrow, if we were to delay indefinitely the development of the tar sands in Alberta, if we were to reduce the vehicle population of this planet by 50%, there would still be enough CO₂ in the atmosphere, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, to move the forces of climate change for the next 50 years at least.

What does that mean? We are all going to be facing a lot more frequent severe weather, while we have water and sewage infrastructure systems that were built for a very different time. There is therefore an immediate necessity for governments to cooperate and to engage in public-private partnerships that are innovative and that allow cities and municipalities across this country to rebuild what will become one of our most critical infrastructures—our water and sewage systems—in the years to come.

I say that because without those kinds of investments, the strain on Canada's property and casualty insurance system will be severe.

I prefer to work with you to improve the infrastructure systems in Canada. I believe we must try to achieve cooperation between the private sector and the public sector, and I encourage this committee to recommend that in its report.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Mr. Yakabuski.

We'll now go to Ms. Hughes Anthony, please.

[Nancy Hughes Anthony, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Bankers Association]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to make a presentation before this committee. My colleague Terry Campbell and I represent 54 banks that are members of the Canadian Bankers Association across the country. We certainly applaud the committee for undertaking this study of a very important sector, the service sector.

I should also emphasize that the banking sector is a Canadian industry that provides Canadians with a very broad range of services nationally. We are also a major industry whose exports are growing, representing Canada's expertise and know-how around the world.

Mr. Chair, you have a deck presentation--I hope you have--dans la langue de votre choix. I won't go into every page of that, Mr. Chair. I will simply highlight a couple of things, give you a bit of an overview of the industry, contributions to the economy, our international involvement in particular, and look at the challenges ahead.

As you can see on slide 4.... Sometimes you read in the press that there are only four or five banks in this country. Well, that couldn't be less true. We have a very diverse, wide-ranging banking industry. I mentioned that the CBA represents 54 banks, but in fact there are actually 73, if you count everybody's subsidiaries and bank branches. Obviously, there is a wide variety of competition; it is not a static market, and as you can see on page 5, there are lots of new entrants into the banking system. We now have the Canadian Tire Bank, President's Choice Financial, virtual banks, and a wide range of banks that provide services to consumers.

I would also point out that the competition is fierce among banks, but there are also literally thousands of other financial service providers who compete for consumers' business, and I've laid out a few of those on slide 6.

I think it should also be emphasized that competition provides benefits for consumers. In terms of prices, for example, Canada's banking system compares very favourably with those of other countries, as you can see on page 7. This study was recently conducted by the Capgemini Group and shows that Canada offers very affordable banking services.

Another competition indicator is the margin between interest rates on deposits and loans. Obviously, in general, the more competitive a market is, the smaller the margin. However, as you can see on page 8, consumers are the ultimate beneficiaries of that.

So there's lots of competition and choice in the marketplace, and very wide access to financial services for individual Canadians. You can see in the slide on page 9 that we actually enjoy...99% of our adult population has an account at a financial institution, and that's a very good statistic internationally.

On page 10, it's a bit of a busy chart, but I think it's important to note that in terms of per capita access, Canada is number one in the world in terms of access to automated banking machines. Then we're seventh in the world in terms of access to branch networks.

With the combination of branches, ABMs, telephone banking and Internet banking, it proves a very highly accessible system.

A few words, Mr. Chair, about the contribution of the banks to the economy. As you can see on page 12, 250,000 employees are directly employed in banks across the country, and I like the fact that the chart is growing. It's a growing industry, which I think is very positive. You can also see that on the chart on page 13; it's a very significant contribution to GDP, and once again, a steadily growing involvement.

I have to talk about taxes--on page 15--everyone's favourite topic, I'm sure. The key point is that the banking industry pays more in corporate income tax than any other industry in the country. We totalled it up at $6.4 billion last year, and I will come back to taxes in a moment.

A word on international involvement, and here I've highlighted it on page 17. It is interesting that many of Canada's banks, as you know, are now internationally active in various parts of the world. I was interested in the recently released document from the Competition Policy Review Panel in which they noted a statistic I didn't know, that finance and insurance contributed 44.1% of Canada's direct investment abroad last year. That's quite an impressive figure, so obviously the banks are very globally active.

I do want to highlight, Mr. Chair, on page 18, that although a growing percentage of the bank profits are coming from foreign activity--you can see it's about 41% in that chart on page 18 on the right--the bulk of the jobs, 81%, and the taxes we pay, 80%, are kept in Canada. I think that is a very interesting statistic.

It is fundamentally important to be competitive internationally. On page 19, you see a list of competitors that we are facing, which are of a very imposing size and are still growing. Canadian competitors are on the right-hand side, at the very end of the table, along with the rank they hold.

I think it's important to note as well, Mr. Chair, that there are other jurisdictions around the world that are not just letting things happen. Governments in jurisdictions in the U.K., New York City, and Australia are very active in terms of appealing to financial services companies to come to their particular jurisdiction, and Canada I think is not immune to these pressures.

Mr. Chair, I'll just wrap up in terms of challenges ahead. Obviously, I'd like to make comments that relate specifically to Canada's service sector and banking sector, but I'd like to highlight the fact that these comments pertain to businesses in all sectors, large and small.

There are four areas that I think are very worthy of consideration, and I would commend them to the interest of this committee.

You won't be surprised that number one is tax. We have told the government that it's done a good job--according to the last fiscal update--in reducing taxes, both corporate and personal. The job is not yet done. We still feel, in some provincial governments in particular, that there are capital taxes and there are corporate rates that are not competitive and should come down. Other countries are not standing still, as you know.

The second point is the regulatory system. I would certainly echo what Mr. Yakabuski said. The financial services regulatory system in Canada is, quite simply, too complex, too costly, and too inefficient. I think there are some initiatives under way to try to streamline regulation. We need to do more there, and certainly the common securities regulator would be a case in point.

The third point, Mr. Chair, is internal trade barriers. This is a file that I think this committee has been seized with for a long time. Clearly, we have to break down the kinds of barriers we see across provincial lines. We applaud B.C. and Alberta, who have decided to create the TILMA, the agreement we've seen just recently in the press, as well as Ontario and Quebec, for getting together. All these are good signs. We hope people in positions of power will be bold and brave in eliminating internal trade barriers.

The fourth is labour force demographics. Banks, as well as other institutions, are feeling the pinch right now and are certainly looking at a very discouraging skills shortage in the future. We want to make sure that the rules and regulations governing the labour market are as flexible and as enabling as possible.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I congratulate you again for having undertaken this review.

From the point of view of the banking sector, I would say we have a strong, competitive industry that Canada can be proud of and that benefits consumers. But it is an increasingly competitive world out there; we can take nothing for granted. Many of our competitors are not standing still. So we do need to continue our efforts to make sure that we enhance our ability to compete.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Ms. Hughes Anthony.

We'll now go to Mr. Swedlove, please.

[Frank Swedlove, President, Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association Inc.]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to participate in the industry committee's study of the service sector, and congratulations for taking on this important topic.

The Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association, established in 1894, is a voluntary trade association that represents the collective interests of its member life and health insurers. The Association's membership accounts for 99 per cent of the life and health insurance in force in Canada and administers about two-thirds of Canada's pension plans.

We have distributed to you our annual publication on Canadian Life and Health Insurance for 2006. A 2007 edition will be printed in the next few weeks and forwarded to you for your information.

Canada's life and health insurance industry is in the business of providing personal financial security, helping to protect individuals, their families, and their businesses against the financial risks of premature death, illness, and retirement.

The industry provides a wide range of financial security products to about 26 million Canadians and their dependants in all walks of life and age groups. In addition, Canadian life and health insurance insurers operate in more than 20 other countries around the world and constitute one of Canada's most important export industries.

Products offered by the industry include individual and group life insurance; retirement and investment contracts, such as individual and group annuities, RRSPs, RRIFs, and pensions; disability insurance to provide replacement income for individuals who are unable to work due to illness or injury; health insurance benefits supplementary to public plans; critical illness insurance to provide financial assistance in the event of serious health problems; and long-term care insurance to help individuals prepare for a time when they can no longer function independently.

In 2006, the life and health insurance industry paid out over $53 billion in benefits to Canadians; that's about $1 billion every week. Over 90% of this amount went to living policyholders, with the remainder paid out as death benefits.

Canadians buy their life and health insurance in a highly competitive marketplace, with 106 life and health insurers from Canada, the United States, Britain, and other countries operating in this country. At the same time, Canadian-owned firms represent over 80% of the marketplace, demonstrating that this remains a predominantly Canadian owned and operated industry.

The life and health insurance industry is a major employer in Canada, with more than 120,000 people working in the business. Of that, close to 45,000 are in management and administrative work and 76,000 are in sales. On average, these are high value-added jobs for Canadians, with competitive salaries and benefits.

The life and health insurance industry is also a significant investor in Canada's economy, with over $400 billion in assets held in the country on behalf of its policyholders at the end of 2006. Investments in Canadian corporations, through bonds and stocks, constituted 55% of the total. The financing of Canadian governments at all levels is another major investment, amounting to 18% of the total.

Canadian life and health insurers represent one of Canada's international success stories. Its major companies, headquartered in Canada, are widely acknowledged as leaders in the global marketplace. The three largest Canadian life and health insurance companies are in the top 10 in the world, measured by market capitalization. They have established a strong presence in various foreign markets — in the United States, Europe, and Asia — over the years. In 2006, for example, Canadian life and health insurers received 56% of their worldwide premiums from outside Canada and held 56% of their worldwide assets in foreign jurisdictions.

The financial strength of Canadian life insurers is one of the reasons they have been able to become major international players. Standard & Poor's, the rating agency, has in fact stated that the Canadian life and health insurance industry is among the most financially strong in the world.

Mr. Chair, I want to emphasize to the committee the importance of financial services to the Canadian economy and the significant potential for Canadian services internationally. The Canadian financial services sector offers high-quality employment and security. Canadian life and health insurance companies are global leaders in exporting services, and we encourage the Government of Canada to continue to seize opportunities to foster an environment that allows us to strengthen our role as world leaders in services.

Given the ever-changing world economy and the increasing pace at which recent changes have been occurring, the committee's study will be very helpful and timely in achieving this goal.

In closing, I'd like to leave the committee with a number of recommendations for your consideration. First, Canada needs to develop a services sector innovation strategy in order to increase the competitiveness of Canada's domestic services sector and the competitiveness of Canada's economy on the international stage. This includes the development of skilled human resources, opening of markets to trade and investment in services, reducing the regulatory burden, and removing internal trade barriers.

Second, I have noted Canada's success story for exporting our insurance expertise abroad. We can only be successful if foreign governments open their markets to our companies and allow them to operate under the same rules as their domestic companies. Therefore, it is essential that Canada participate actively in bilateral and multilateral trade deals that promote Canadian industry interests. More specifically, in the present Doha Round of negotiations of the WTO, Canada must push for the inclusion of a meaningful services agreement. Services interests should in no way be held hostage by other negotiations.

Third, and related to this, we need to ensure that the Canadian government is well resourced in order to represent our interests around the world. This would include providing staff in our missions abroad who are knowledgeable about the services sector.

Fourth, one of the core gaps in understanding the services sector in Canada is the lack of comprehensive data available from Statistics Canada. We would welcome the opportunity to work with the government towards improving this situation.

Finally, the importance of the services industry to Canada warrants a more thorough review, and we encourage the committee to undertake a services study with the same ambition with which it conducted its excellent manufacturing study.

Thank you again, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to appear before the committee today. I would be pleased to provide any further input and respond to any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Mr. Swedlove. I thank all of you for those very substantive presentations.

We will now to go questions from members. I just want to indicate to the witnesses that each member for the first round will have six minutes. For the second round they will have five minutes. Members are limited in their time, so please be brief in your responses. If a question is not directed to you but you wish to respond, please indicate to me and I will ensure you have an opportunity to address the question as well.

We'll start with Mr. McTeague for six minutes.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Witnesses, it's a pleasure to have you here today. We, too, on this side, feel this is a very important study. We look forward to your further comments as we head towards, hopefully, some fairly palatable and constructive conclusions.

We have ridings across Canada where the service industry is in fact the most important industry as far as employment and growth are concerned. Your industries feature very prominently in that regard.

On any given day, someone who is an eternal optimist may open the paper and wonder what the effect of international tribulations and turbulence may be in terms of our own rosy picture at home, which has been good, at least I'd like to think, for the past 15 years now, gentlemen.

I'd like to ask this question. With Canada's exposure to sub-prime and the credit crunch down there, we are hearing from some in various institutions--insurance and banking, of course. So I guess this is to all witnesses who wish to respond to this. Is it fair to say that we in Canada have not been quite open or have not been able to fully comprehend the extent to which our institutions' exposures to investments made south of the border have come home to roost? What impacts do you believe this will have, in terms of the job picture, growth picture, in terms of the availability of credit for Canadians in the forthcoming six months or so?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Ms. Hughes Anthony.

[Nancy Hughes Anthony]

Thank you very much. That's a very pertinent question.

For some Canadians it's a very complex issue. Some Canadians are unclear about the link between U.S. sub-prime mortgages and the situation up here, which basically is related to asset-backed commercial paper. Each one of the banks and institutions that have been affected by this has a different situation, a different book of business. When I look around the world, I think Canada has handled, and is handling, this situation very well. As you know, our banks have publicly affirmed their commitment to back the performance and the liquidity of their paper. We've had the Minister of Finance, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, and also the regulator say that the situation is stabilized and things are going to work themselves out. Obviously market participants in the so-called Montreal proposal are at a very tricky point. I'm not going to comment on that. I hope Mr. Purdy Crawford is going to do his work, and we're going to let him.

There are some lessons learned with respect to issues around transparency, how institutions need to explain the products, and how investors need to ask for the explanation of the products. I was quite cheered when Deputy Governor Pierre Duguay of our Bank of Canada spoke recently about a review of the Canadian financial system that was undertaken by the IMF. He said that major Canadian banks have enough capital to withstand a severe shock and that in his mind this was a very positive thing.

I don't know if my colleague, Terry, has anything to say about the credit tightening. I don't think we've seen anything of that.

[Terry Campbell, Vice-President, Policy, Canadian Bankers Association]

I would add to what Nancy has said that the banks are very strong. They are very well capitalized, and they have taken into account the fluctuations in values. We're not seeing any evidence at all that it's having an impact on the availability of credit. We look at Statistics Canada data, we do our own discussions with banks, and there is no evidence that it's having a negative impact on the availability of credit.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. McTeague.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

I want to thank you for those answers. I think they're very helpful in terms of the next few months.

As members of Parliament, some of us who have been here a little longer recall a time when it wasn't uncommon to have several complaints from various financial institutions and the insurance industry. I mentioned this to Mark before we came in. We don't get that anymore. So I think your industries are doing a far better job at providing the latitude in services that I think the public has come to appreciate.

On the same subject, Mr. Yakabuski, you raised some very interesting points with respect to the impact of weather and the bottom line. Many of the insurance industries head offices, or availabilities of commerce in the United States, I suspect, also put us in a precarious position. Would it be fair to say that if a disaster takes place in the United States, there are impacts for consumers in Canada, weather related or otherwise? I'm thinking of Hurricane Katrina and the effect it has had on the bottom line for Canadian consumers. I don't think we have to go back to 9/11. Canadians are certainly sensitive to this, but I'm not sure if that reflects itself in terms of price and quality of choice.

[Mark Yakabuski]

I'd like to say a couple of things.

First of all, in response to the earlier discussion, fortunately we have a system that is partly self-regulating. I think a lot of businesses will take heart that if they are experiencing a bit of tightness on one side, they will know that commercial property and commercial liability insurance premiums have been declining consistently for the past three to three and a half years across Canada on average. That gives businesses more disposable income at a time when they perhaps need it. I'm very delighted to be able to share that with you.

The second thing is that it's not possible for me to tell you exactly what the impact of another major disaster would be in some part of the world, other than to say that there would be an impact. Again, we have a very international insurance system that allows us to redistribute risk in a way that protects people against the butt of a real disaster. For example, take the ice storm of January 1998, which cost the property and casualty insurance industry $2 billion in 2006 dollars. A large portion of those losses were assumed by international reinsurance. Those weren't coming from Canadian policyholders. The international reinsurance system assumed much of that cost, just as it did with the cost of Katrina. Ultimately that has to factor into the cost of the reinsurance that insurance companies purchase, but there are a lot of other factors that affect it. It's not a one-to-one relationship. That's why we always have to be working together.

It's a highly varied system that constantly redistributes risk in order to protect Canadians and other insurance policy holders.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McTeague.

We'll go to Madam Brunelle.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Good morning. Thank you all for being with us.

Mr. Swedlove, you work in the private pension fund field. People are feeling a great deal of concern. The number of baby boomers who will be retiring is increasing, and we're seeing a reversal of the age pyramid. We are also seeing an increase in the number of financial products. I'm apprehensive when the time comes to invest in my RRSPs, given the number of products offered. It's almost enough to make you crazy.

The stock markets are experiencing shocks, as a result of which people often no longer know where to turn. Do you feel well prepared to face all these challenges?

[Frank Swedlove]

Indeed, the issue of providing advice to Canadians generally has become a much more complex area, and the agency function I think has become much more complicated than it was before, but obviously, in our view, the industry is certainly up to that challenge. We are increasingly involved in the business of wealth management as opposed to the traditional life insurance business, so our business has very much changed over the years, and that is reflected in what our agents provide to our customers.

In terms of the proportion that is involved in the wealth management side, maybe I'll just turn to my colleague Mr. Witol. Is there a percentage of the industry that's involved in wealth management?

[James Witol, Vice-President, Taxation and Research, Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association Inc.]

The industry, as Frank mentioned, has about $400 billion in assets in Canada, and $150 billion of those dollars are in segregated funds. These are either group or individual products designed for retirement. In addition, there would be a smaller amount of non-segregated fund savings business, and the fact is that our industry has moved away from its original life insurance focus to wealth management and health insurance over the years.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

In your recommendations, you talk about reducing the regulatory burden. Don't you believe that regulation is really necessary in order to protect consumers? In Quebec, we've had prominent cases of abuse that are still before the courts.

Could you explain your comments to me a little more?

[Frank Swedlove]

It is very important for us to adopt industry regulation. We work with regulatory authorities in all the provinces and at the federal level to ensure that this regulation is useful and that it will work for both the industry and the general public. As for our relationship with the Quebec government, I'm going to ask my colleague to give you some explanation.

[Yves Millette, Senior Vice-President, Quebec Affairs, Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association Inc.]

Regulation is indeed a very important matter. I don't believe we deny this objective. However, I feel that, across Canada, increasing emphasis is being placed on regulation that is based on principles rather than details. We Quebeckers very well understand what that means, since we've been living with the Civil Code for a very long time. However, in financial matters, regulation is often a matter of details. It thus becomes difficult for businesses to deal with all these details, which, in many cases, makes regulation less effective.

There's talk of deregulating or abolishing very specific regulation in order to replace it with regulation based on principles like those often seen in Quebec with the Civil Code.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

Do I have any time left, Mr. Chairman?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have one minute left.

[Mark Yakabuski]

I'll answer your question, with your permission, madam.

Yesterday, it was my pleasure to have lunch with Jean St-Gelais, President of the Autorité des marchés financiers in Quebec. From what I've seen, Quebec probably has the best regulated system in Canada as regards the property and casualty insurance industry.

That said, there are still other regions that have far to go to achieve healthy regulation of prices, in particular. Virtually all provinces apply a system to regulate property and casualty insurance prices, particularly in the car insurance field. The ironic aspect of the matter is that car insurance price regulation was created in the United States in the 1920s, not to protect the consumers, but to keep prices at a high enough level to prevent certain companies from becoming insolvent. A measure may appear to be designed to protect consumers, when that is far from being the case.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

In car accident cases, people often decide, in view of the amount of their deductible, not to file a claim, to prevent their insurance premiums from rising the following year. Your industry comes in for considerable consumer criticism on this point.