SALVAGED-VEHICLE CONTROVERSY

Opposition calls for top-level changes at ICBC

NDP decries reappointment of three insurance board members, but Solicitor-General defends agency's handling of recent scandal

Hot Link = Globe and Mail

ROBERT MATAS

July 19, 2008

VANCOUVER -- Directors of the Insurance Corp. of B.C. should be held accountable for failing to provide adequate oversight while employees participated in a controversial scheme to buy damaged vehicles fixed up at its collision-repair training facility, NDP critic Michael Farnworth says.

"If the government is serious that they are making changes at ICBC, it is not good enough to just say, 'Yeah, some people who did this are not there,' " Mr. Farnworth said yesterday in an interview. "This is a significant blow to the public view of ICBC. The government needs to move and make not only changes in polices and procedures but also changes at the board level."

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Mr. Farnworth said directors on the board's human resources and compensation committee should have been asking questions and ensuring they knew what was taking place. The government should not have re-appointed Ken Martin, chairman of the board's human resources and compensation committee or two other directors, Neil de Gelder and Diane Fulton, who were reappointed at the same time, he said.

"Something is really wrong," he said. "The government knows about this investigation, they know that this report is coming down and they go ahead and reappoint three members of the board that have been there while the whole scandal has taken place."

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Mr. van Dongen also said he took exception to criticism coming from Mr. Farnworth. Some of the systemic problems that the board is dealing with developed over many years starting in 1998, when Mr. Farnworth was the minister responsible for ICBC in the NDP government, Mr. Van Dongen said.

"It appears to me Michael Farnworth is throwing stones at people who acted immediately and competently when they became aware of it. In fact, the problem started under his watch," Mr. van Dongen said.

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