新政府：安省汽车保费从今天开始不得涨价

Ontario's new Liberal government has frozen auto insurance premiums effective today, Premier Dalton McGuinty said just moments after he and his cabinet were sworn in.

McGuinty said it was the first order of business during a brief meeting of his cabinet after the swearing-in ceremony at the Ontario legislature.

"We just had our very first cabinet meeting. We've instructed the minister of finance to take all necessary steps so we can freeze auto insurance rates effective today," McGuinty told a news conference.

He said newly minted Finance Minister Greg Sorbara had been told to take all the necessary steps to freeze the rates immediately.

NDP Leader Howard Hampton predicted insurance companies would either ignore McGuinty and keep hiking premiums, or refuse to insure some Ontario drivers.

The Liberals campaigned on a promise to freeze soaring insurance rates immediately if elected and then reduce them by an average of 10 per cent.

A report by the Consumers' Association of Canada in September suggested Ontario's private system costs drivers far more than residents in provinces with public systems. In Toronto, drivers were paying as much as 500 per cent more than those in provinces such as British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec, the study showed.

The insurance industry has lashed out at suggestions that it gouges clients, saying that report ignored the higher benefits paid out in private-sector systems than in the four provinces with government-owned insurance.

The association acknowledged that private insurers use several factors in determining premiums not used in publicly run systems — for example, charging higher rates to unmarried drivers, men and drivers under age 25, all regarded as higher risk. Publicly run systems base rates on individual driving records rather than statistical likelihoods and demographics.

But it also argued that much of the rationale used by private insurers to explain higher rates — such as rising health-care and legal costs and falling investment returns from stock and bond markets — means public auto insurance premiums should have risen in step.