Special Committee for Provisions to the Insurance Vehicle Act cancelled due to snap provincial election

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Before we get to what's happening with this committee, can you give us a bit of background about what happened to you and what led you to start that group? Yes, so November 4th, 2024, I was crossing the street and got hit by a dump truck. I was severely injured with many different injuries and almost died that day. I spent nine weeks on the hospital, had nine surgeries. It's been a very huge change in my life. And of course, dealing with ICBC has been a lot of work and a lot of navigation of this system. So I decided to start victims of no fault because a lot of injured victims have been suffering under this system. A lot of us don't feel heard. And we have been left to navigate this system alone. So I wanted to do some research to understand what the injured experience was for victims. And have you heard similar stories, not so much maybe about the injuries and what happened to you, but when people then are trying to navigate through ICBC, especially now with the no fault model, were you hearing similar stories? Definitely. I honestly, it's a bit of a weird one to say, but I do feel like I'm on the more privileged end of this because I did not have a brain injury. There are a lot of people who have brain injuries. In fact, 39% of the people that we surveyed had a brain injury of some sort. And it's been very, very hard for them to navigate the system. And yeah, there are a lot of situations that are similar to mine. And just being somebody who was born here and has corporate experience, I'm really concerned about people who are immigrants or senior citizens, how they navigate this system. And people who are familiar with the system will know it's called enhanced care, but we're really talking about a no fault insurance system. So what were some of the roadblocks? When here, like you said, you spent weeks in the hospital, I know you had numerous broken bones and a very long recovery that I'm sure you're still on. What were some of the roadblocks with trying to get help to get compensation or to get things from ICBC? Yeah, so I think one of the things that no fault insurance is known for is their 12-week pre-approved treatments. There are a number of treatments that you can get, whether that's RMT or Cairo or Physioconysiology that are already approved. So it should be pretty seamless going through that process. However, for me, being in the hospital for nine weeks, that 12-week period started the day of my accident. So I ended up not being able to use that. In fact, when I was discharged from the hospital home, I was still in a hospital bed for about four weeks at home, and it took four weeks for Physio to first come in and actually do a session with me. And by that time, the window would have been closed, wouldn't it? Yes, so it was completely closed. So all of the practitioners that I work with that are in the allied health space are all need to do assessments before I start treatment. So it's an assessment process and then the approval process, all working with different adjusters. And you know, I think one of the similarities in a lot of our cases is that a lot of us have worked with many different adjusters throughout our recovery time. And going back to the pre-approved 12-week, I've heard of this before and to me, it doesn't make any sense, especially for somebody in your position and people that would need that care. If you're in the hospital for nine weeks and then you're home and you're still recovering, of course, you're not going to be starting Physio. And is it that also in that people don't realize it's not really common knowledge put out there that it kicks in the day of the accident, not the day that you're ready for that kind of whatever the treatment is that you're getting? Yeah, it's you know, it's interesting in our research, in the research that I did 75% of us actually didn't understand what enhanced care really meant until we were injured. So part of victims of no fault is really about raising awareness about the realities of enhanced care and what people would expect if they are injured because it could really happen to anybody. Everyone's got a hard question about AI, your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way because there's hope in hard questions. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything, sunscreen, snacks, a stapler, the new PayPal app is like that, but for your money. Shop, pay, manager account, and earn rewards all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security, and paskeys, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started. See PayPal.com/protectionterms. And I think there is kind of that faith that there is going to be treatment and health or help for people, but clearly that is not happening for everybody, especially people with with such severe injuries. Julie, I want to talk about the committee. So this committee was taking place to hear from people who had had experiences like yours. So where does the committee stand right now? So the committee has now been dissolved. I was very fortunate enough to speak on Monday to the special committee representatives of MLA's. But unfortunately by Tuesday afternoon, any of the people who were scheduled for the afternoon were out of luck. So the committee is now dissolved. And we honestly don't know what the next steps are, which is really disheartening. And so the committee then was resolved, sorry, dissolved because of the snap election. That's correct. And there must have been people that traveled to come and to testify or to speak and to hear this. I would imagine there were people from outside or out of town weren't there? Yeah, my husband and I actually traveled from the mainland over to Victoria. So luckily we did speak or else it would have been a completely sunk cost for us. I do know of some other injured victims who were planning on traveling to share their story as well. And I, there's an injured, not an injured victim, but a victim of enhanced care. Her name is Linda. And she was actually speaking on behalf of her granddaughters and daughter who passed away in a motor vehicle collision. And she was actually scheduled to go on Wednesday, but she was there the whole time. And luckily she was because they were able to fit her in on Monday just knowing that a snap election would likely be called. So with this now effectively being cancelled because of the snap election, did you get any sense? Will it depend on what happens with the election and the outcome if this committee is going to be able to pick up at some point in the future? Yeah, I honestly from the communications I've read it's all very vague. Even before the snap election was called what the next steps would look like was very vague as well. Ultimately the key deliverable from all of this was going to be a report delivered in February. But how they got to that point and how they look at our feedback and submissions. I'm not too sure how they would have gotten from here to that report in February. Well, it must be so disappointing for you and the others to have this committee be dissolved just as it was getting underway. Julia, what do you do now? Again, you created the group victims of no fault. Are you still looking for people who can join and tell their stories or to be part of this? What do you do now? So right now we're going to be focusing. I'm going to be shifting on just election coverage of understanding what the platforms are doing and how enhanced care works into the different platforms. Ultimately, it's a huge shift for me. And it's also funded. But my goal is to just continue to raise awareness and also see ways that we can support victims. I think a lot of us, at the end of the day, we just want the opportunity to be heard. I think the survey that I did was very helpful for people who were maybe too nervous to speak out because they weren't sure if it was going to affect their claim to have some sort of an outlet to voice what their experience has been. So that's one of the things that I'm going to continue to look for opportunities for people to have. Would you like to see enhanced care scrapped or at least changed so that victims with catastrophic injuries will get the help they need? For me, I know it would be a lot for us to change anything at this point, but I think if anything needs to be done, I want it to just be that injured victims are at the center of what this care could look like. In my two years of being under the ICBC system, this was really the first time I was able to provide meaningful feedback on what the experience has been. And there's just not a lot of public information about what the injured experience has been. And my hope is that there's more metrics attached to it, a greater audit done of what can be improved and from there a system developed. Well, I so appreciate you joining us to talk more about this. Julia, we will leave it there for today, but thank you for coming on the show. Thank you so much. Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. 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