The B.C. government is quietly changing legislation that is at the centre of a class action lawsuit making its way through the courts.
The suit, filed in 2020, alleges that the province is illegally using ICBC to tax people for health-care costs by essentially double-dipping on MSP premiums.
The suit says the practice has cost ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars and driven up insurance costs for decades.
“The legislation effectively removes what was being complained of in the class action, the ability of ICBC to effectively double dip and get compensation both through the insurance process as well as compensation through the MSP process when people’s medical claims are paid out,” Kyla Lee, a lawyer at Acumen Law, told Global News.
“Nothing about this legislation being tabled, if it passes, is going to change what’s happened in the past, but it’s interesting timing that they’re doing it now. It seems to be tacitly an admission that what they were doing all along was maybe not correct.
