Yesterday, I wrote a commentary on my attendance at the last meeting sponsored by the Coalition Against No-Fault Insurance, and I was very appreciative of the outstanding work of all the people associated with No-Fault, that is the Coalition members, injured victims, family physicians, lawyers, university professors and researchers, people at large(1). All these people volunteered their time and their resources for a cause, the restoration of their rights taken away by our no fault governments. And today, as I read the OPINIONS of the StarPhoenix(2), I feel disappointed and I must say disheartened as I realize that our journalists have an agenda of their own, not to inform and educate the public, but to publicize their brainwashing journalistic garbage, the same garbage we pointed out in one of our articles when one National Post editor belittled Justice John Reilly(3). And in this respect, our sold out journalists have not changed since 1991 when Dr. Donella Medows stated that "They are event-oriented; they report only the surface of things, not the underlying structures... They are attracted to personalities and authorities; they are uninterested in people they've never heard of... They have a tendency to force the world to conform to their story... They are strongly conservative; though they like to think of themselves as tough and uncompromising, in fact they challenge society only at its margins; most of the time, usually unconsciously, they reinforce the status quo and resist really new ideas... Also unconsciously they report through filters of helplessness, hopelessness, cynicism, passivity, and acceptance. They report problems, not solutions, obstacles, not opportunities. They systematically unempower themselves and their audience(4)."

In today's OPINIONS, our StarPhoenix journalists ridicule the role of the many groups fighting No-Fault. The joint no-fault committee of provincial lawyers and the Canadian Bar Association have just released a report recommending a modified tort system with deductible for pain and suffering and a levy on at-fault drivers. Our journalists discount the work of this committee since they didn't follow the proper process in presenting this report directly to the Personal Injury Protection Plan (PIPP) review panel. These journalists state "However much they claim that they are acting in the public interest by boycotting the review panel in protest of its composition, it does the lawyers little good to whine and moan from the sidelines. By opting instead to side with a few dozen disgruntled persons who've opted to conduct a "parallel review" that has no chance of effecting change in the undoubtedly faulty PIPP system, the lawyers are only undermining their own credibility. The joint committee's decision to invest some big dollars to commission this study shows that lawyers are motivated by something greater than pure altruism in wanting SGI to return to a modified tort system."

As I have already mentioned in my yesterday's article, any good willing researcher or writer can write a book on the social wrongs of No-Fault, but not our journalists. These journalists don't take the effort to visit the web site of the Coalition Against No-Fault and find out for themselves what the evidence is against No-Fault; they have a superior agenda of their own, to tell the public garbage and maintain as long as possible the status quo. They state that the lawyers committee has spent big dollars to come up with the report and that they are motivated by something greater than pure altruism. These journalists must be reminded that Saskatchewan Government Insurance (SGI) has spent some $2 million on the deviant research conducted by Dr. David Cassidy. They must also be reminded that the individual rights taken away by this government have a very very high price. They label the Coalition Against No-Fault as a group of a few dozen disgruntled persons who've opted to conduct a "parallel review" and they should be ashamed for this.

The no-fault legislation was passed in bad faith since the government knew there that the tort system wouldn't have effected increased insurance rates and financial losses(5); this government was formed in bad faith by giving the finger to the Saskatchewan people(6); SGI and Dr. David Cassidy behaved in bad faith when they concocted their no-fault research; Honourable John Nilson behaved in bad faith when he first established the PIPP review panel. Therefore, this No-Fault scheme has been a fraud at the expense of the Saskatchewan people. Mr. Gordon Adair was right when he said that No-Fault is not a financial matter anymore, it is a political matter, and that this government must be indexed out of the Legislature.

References/Endnotes

General reference: political and economic articles published by Ensign

Coalition Against No Fault In Saskatchewan, Box 24007, 240 Albert Street, Regina, Saskatchewan S4R 8R8, (306)546-4424, coalition@dlcwest.com www.againstnofault.com

1. No-fault insurance and the Meeting of September 9, 2000 at Castle Theatre in Saskatoon, by Mario deSantis, September 11, 2000 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2000_200/desantis225/nofaultmeeting.html

2. Lawyers fail public interest, OPINIONS, The StarPhoenix, September 12, 2000, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

3. The National Post and Judge John Reilly, by Mario deSantis, September 7, 2000 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2000_200/desantis223/nationalpost.html

4. System Dynamics Meets the Press, by Donella H. Meadows, The Global Citizen, pp. 1-12, Washington, DC, Island Press, 1991 ftp://sysdyn.mit.edu/ftp/sdep/Roadmaps/RM1/D-4143-1.pdf

5. Two memos written by Honourable Eric Cline in February 1994 and directed to the NDP caucus. Refer to Cline questioned no-fault process, memos show, by Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix, September 9, 2000, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

6. Governmental coalition in Saskatchewan: a private contractual deal at the expense of the electorate? by Mario deSantis, October 2, 1999 http://ensign.ftlcomm.com/desantisArticles/desantis71/GovContract-Oct04-99.html