Mr. Speaker, absolutely. When a limit is put on the liability, it is telling the business what its ultimate, top-end cost is going to be. Businesses like that. They like to know what their costs are going to be.
What it is also telling the public is that all the excess costs are going to be borne by the taxpayer. We are not talking about a little bit of money here; we are talking about a tremendous amount of money.
The insurance consortium tells us today that it will be able to get limits of whatever amount, $1 billion or whatever it tells us, but because events in the insurance markets are outside of its control, it will come to us in another year or two from now and say, “Sorry, but our insurers withdrew the terms” or the insurance company put some restrictions, or the insurance company doubled or tripled the premiums.
A number of years ago, in 1986 in Manitoba, liability insurance rates went up so drastically and so fast that playground equipment manufacturers could not get liability. When they could not get liability, they could not produce the product and they could not sell it to the City of Winnipeg. And that is just playground equipment.
When it comes to liability, insurance runs the entire economy.