Editorial
As regular readers of The Current will know, our lawsuit against Madawaska Valley Township and members of its 2018-22 Council concluded earlier this year. The municipal insurer, Intact Public Entities (IPE), footed the entire bill for our successful claim through paying the defendants’ legal costs and our compensation, as well as some of our costs for defending ourselves. All in, the total payout we have calculated to be in the region of three-quarters of a million dollars.
Yet the Township’s insurance policy, as all such policies do, contains exclusions barring coverage for intentional misconduct; i.e. in this case, targeted malice against The Current and its owners, amounting to misfeasance in public office and abuse of power. It is no different from the situation when you are in a car accident (emphasis on the word “accident!”) when your insurer will respond to protect you from liability for any damages you may cause. However, if you deliberately drive your car at another vehicle to cause it damage, as in a bout of road rage for example, then clearly your insurer will deny coverage because it was by no means an “accident.” The same principle applies to all other types of insurance, including municipal insurance. So what explains IPE’s decision to make an exception to established insurance law in this case? The effect of what they did was to shield the defendants from the consequences of their own misconduct when the financial consequences should have been paid from their own pockets. We have attempted on numerous occasions over the past few years to get an explanation from them, but they have simply ignored us.
What this means for you
Ratepayers are now subject to substantially increased insurance premiums as well as, in some cases, a fivefold increase in deductibles. When she disclosed this, the MV Treasurer said it was as a result of “liability.” Higher deductibles have the knock-on effect of harming other community groups who use municipal facilities. It used to be that if an insurable event (accident) happened on a ball field, ice rink, etc. the community group using the facility only had to pay the first $5,000 on any claim. That sounds like a lot of money, right? But now it could be as much as $25,000. Can your community organization afford that kind of deductible? Probably not.
What can you do about it?
Our former MV Mayor, the late Johnnie Hildebrandt, was very worried several years ago about this state of affairs, even before our insurance rates were bumped up. He even wrote to IPE saying that the municipal insurance policy should not be abused to cover intentional malicious conduct by elected representatives. Like us, he received no response.
We have also reported that we complained to the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRAO) which regulates the conduct of insurers in the province, which resulted in only a partially satisfactory response. Hence, the Petition referred to below is also directed to the FSRAO.
We therefore believe it is now time to take matters into our own hands and attempt to hold them to account.
The Current has therefore prepared a proposed Petition for residents of Madawaska Valley to sign. Click HERE to view. In due course, we will circulate a final version with an explanation of how and where you can sign, but before that we intend to air a video podcast on our YouTube Channel providing all relevant details of the history resulting in the lawsuit, what caused the horrendous amount of money IPE should never have spent, and its refusal to accept our invitations to try to reduce the time and money it was wasting over the six years it spent in protracting the completion of the litigation. All of this resulted in the unjust enrichment of two Sault Ste Marie law firms.
We invite anyone with questions or suggestions about this to contact us by email to madvalleycurrent@gmail.com or by telephone 613.518.1094.