Justice committee  Personally, I consider the fear to be an irrational one. Genetic discrimination, as it's being presented, is totally unlike something like racial discrimination. There are people who have been ill-treated in our society for decades, for centuries, because they belong to a certain

Justice committee  Just to put his context in a better context, if people were allowed to buy fire insurance when the smoke detector starts to beep, and not just beep, but give the full alarm, then that would push up the cost of fire insurance an awful lot, because people wouldn't buy until the fir

Justice committee  Yes. There are several reasons why this is going to be an issue. If you compare with the U.K., there was a paper written by Professor Angus Macdonald, and I believe he also did a report for Senator Cowan. He found a negligible increase in premium rates because of the ban, as it w

Justice committee  There are two main differences. In the U.S. the costs between those who have very serious illnesses and those who are generally healthy can be very sizable. The incentive is for only those who are the most ill to get the insurance. That's why in the U.S. the losses are astronomic

Justice committee  Yes, but you see if the insurance companies increase their rates by that amount, their profit is going to end up being the same. This is not about protecting the profits of the insurance companies. They're going to get the same profits either way, because they can adjust their pr

Justice committee  Actually, I just received some information from the U.K. this morning. I haven't really had time to digest it, but they're very concerned that the frequency of genetic tests has gone up so much since their moratorium was accepted that they think there's a shift in the balance so

Justice committee  Excuse me, Mr. Chair. There are some further comments from the Canadian Institute of Actuaries.

Justice committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. You may not have intended it, but the anti-selection that Bill S-201 would allow confers a benefit on those who test positive for certain genes. They know that they will be able to buy insurance priced to cover a risk much lower than their own ris