Outmoded and Outdated No More: Amendments to B.C.'s Insurance Act

Authors: Krista Prockiw and Nigel Kent

Published: October, 2009.

It was fully six year's ago when the Supreme Court of Canada in KP Pacific Holdings Ltd. v. Guardian Insurance [2003] 1 S.C.R. 433 ("KP Pacific") declared that BC's current Insurance Act (The "Current Act") was "outmoded" and resulting in "unproductive, wasteful litigation about technicalities" and urged,

"It is our hope that legislatures will rectify this situation by amending the Insurance Act to provide specifically for comprehensive [all-risk] policies. In an insurance era dominated by comprehensive [all-risk] policies, it is imperative that Canada's Insurance Acts specifically and unambiguously address how these statutes are to operate and the rules by which comprehensive policies are to be governed."

It would be highly salutary for the Legislature to revisit these provisions and indicate its intent with respect to all-risks and multiperil policies. In the meantime, the task of resolving disputes arising from this disjunction between insurance law and practice falls to the courts. Brown and Menezes lament: "Surely there can be little which is less productive, or more wasteful, than litigation about such technicalities": C. Brown and J. Menezes, Insurance Law in Canada (2nd ed. 1991), at p. 16. I whole-heartedly agree.

At long last the Legislature has responded to the challenge to revisit the provisions of the Insurance Act and on September 15, 2009 introduced Bill 6, the Insurance Amendment Act 2009, which, like last years version, will substantially change a number of key rules in BC insurance law (the "New Act"). The Bill received first reading on September 15th, and must now proceed through the various steps of the legislative process as well as have numerous Regulations drafted.

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