Managing the Public Sector. Automobile Insurance in Western Canada

Abstract

Public automobile insurance programs in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and British Columbia raise a number of questions of equity and efficiency. This paper examines the programs from several different viewpoints, comparing the actuarial categories, rate structures, and incentives in the public insurance provinces with those in Alberta. Suggestions are offered for improving the equity and efficiency of the programs. Questions of openness of information and organizational learning are discussed on the basis of Saskatchewan and Manitoba experiences. The New Democratic Party in the last few years has won elections in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia. These governments have been innovative in both the social welfare and insurance areas, following the example of Saskatchewan, where the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the NDPs predecessor, was first elected in 1944. The growth of the public sector and the problems and opportunities engendered by such expansion are not unique to Canada, but may have implications for the postindustrial society, both in North America and elsewhere.' Government-run automobile insurance was part of the platforms of both Manitoba and British Columbia NDP parties, and after their election (in 1969 and 1972 respectively), they moved to implement such programs. Because the British Columbia NDP was voted out of office in 1975, and the new Social Credit government raised insurance premiums dramatically, Leslie L. Roos, Jr., holds the Ph.D. degree from M.I.T. and is Professor, Faculty of Administrative Studies, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg. He is coauthor of Managers of Modernization (Harvard, 1971); Editor of The Politics of Ecosuicide (HoltRinehart-Winston, 1971); coeditor of Quasi-Experimental Approaches (Northwestern, 1971). He is currently involved in studies using the large data banks generated by National Health Insurance in Canada. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1975 meetings of the Canadian Association of Administrative Sciences, Edmonton, Alberta. The author thanks Elaine Recksiedler and Barb McKinley for their research assistance, as well as W. C. Gibson, Brian Owen, Ernie Vogt, John McCallum, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. 1 For a representative discussion of postindustrialism, see Daniel Bell, The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973); Samuel P. Huntington, Postindustrial Politics: How Benign Will It Be? Comparative Politics, 6 (June 1974): 163-191; and Timothy M. Hennessey and B. Guy Peters, Postindustrialism and Public Policy. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, California, September 2-5, 1975.