Using the Insurance Corp. of B.C. as a collection agency for unpaid student loans seems like a great idea. Why should the rest of us subsidize those who default on their obligations?
But the concept is not as neat and easy as it sounds. It raises many questions.
ICBC already has the authority to turn away people who have unpaid traffic fines or are more than $3,000 behind in child support. Finance Minister Mike de Jong introduced legislation this week that would let the Crown corporation refuse service to those who haven’t repaid their student loans, as well as people with unpaid fines for such things as violating environmental laws and hunting regulations.
De Jong said ICBC has been an effective debt collector because, sooner or later, everyone who drives must come in contact with the Crown corporation. That makes it difficult for deadbeats — those who drive, that is — to dodge their obligations.
He says the system will come with provisions for hardship relief — and that’s essential. Some people fall into arrears through no fault of their own.
Debt-collecting is often associated with high pressure and intimidation. With ICBC, there’s no need for strong-arm tactics — if you don’t pay what you owe, you can’t renew your driver’s licence. It’s quite simple.
Or is it?
The process is tied to people who drive. If a person doesn’t have a driver’s licence, he or she will not likely be tagged by ICBC. That could give people who don’t drive the impression that they don’t have to repay their student loans.
A person without a driver’s licence who habitually rides a bicycle without a helmet can basically ignore the tickets he gets — there’s little authorities can do to enforce the law in that case.
And is this the direction we want ICBC to go? The Crown corporation was formed to provide British Columbians with affordable car insurance. Its role grew, and it took over some functions of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Ensuring traffic fines are paid was not an unreasonable extension of its mandate — those are still driving-related issues.
But the proposed legislation extends ICBC’s reach far beyond driving and motor vehicles. It could conceivably connect a person’s driver’s-licence number to every service from the provincial government. Do we want that?
The province already gives British Columbians the choice of combining a driver’s licence and the CareCard into one B.C. Services card, which gives access to all government services.
It’s convenient to be able to access all provincial services with one card, but that also makes an array of private information vulnerable to exploitation or error. Is it right that ICBC employees can know, through their computers, that you haven’t paid off your student loan?
This should certainly be scrutinized by privacy commissioner Elizabeth Denham to ensure safeguards are in place, that privacy is not sacrificed on the altar of expediency.
There are also technological risks when too many eggs are put into one digital basket. The province launched its new Integrated Case Management system in 2012 that linked information on thousands of social assistance and child-welfare clients, including sensitive details on child abuse, custody disputes and welfare payments. It was plagued with problems, and had a serious breakdown in the spring of 2014.
Integrated systems are a good concept, but often the implementation doesn’t live up to the original design, and something that was supposed to make life easier can make it more complicated.
We don’t want to see people evade their responsibilities at the expense of others, but we want to be sure the cure doesn’t turn out to be worse than the illness.
