Our God is a free market kind of God. How else to explain the reality that our Benevolent God of Gods chooses to smite, maim and otherwise do grave, sometimes even life-ending, bodily harm to those who would choose — or are simply unlucky enough — to live in a province with public auto insurance?

Thank God, in Nova Scotia we get to live in a paradise under a government with the good sense to put their faith and our auto insurance premium dollars in the hands of God-fearing, profit-driven, private sector insurance companies.

He — Our God is a He, trust me on that — prefers it that way.

I learned all of this, thanks to the timely release last week of Public Auto Insurance: A Mortality Warning for Motorists, an in-depth five-page analysis by the Fraser Institute demonstrating conclusively just how God feels about socialist solutions to skyrocketing car insurance premiums.

I say timely because its publication conveniently coincides with the current election campaign in Ontario where voters must make a life-and-death choice between Our God’s own personal fave, Ernie, and the Godless Others, who might regulate or, perish the thought, even nationalize our sacred private auto insurance business.

But the Fraser Institute’s authoritative, weighty, unassailable tome is important for the rest of us to read and heed too.

For we too are being tempted daily by the Satans of socialism and their siren promises of lower premiums, fairer access and more stable insurance rates.

Get thee behind us, Darrell. . . er, Satan.

Although this report by the Fraser Institute — an independent, non-partisan think tank favoured by Our God — focuses specifically on the auto insurance industry, its implications go far beyond simply reminding us of the inherent importance of driving while white and privately insured.

The study’s author is Mark Mullins, the Director of Ontario Policy Studies for the Fraser Institute and a former Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative policy advisor who these days doubles as a columnist for The Globe and Mail. Mullins even helpfully wrote his column last week in praise of his own study, modestly describing it only as “new research from the Fraser Institute” and “a study out this week.”

Mullins deserves far more credit than that for so deftly demonstrating that “provinces with public auto insurance have higher auto collision, death, injury and property damage rates than those with market-based systems,” and then extrapolating from that to predict that Ontario “could be faced with 50 more deaths and 3,900 more personal injuries to young people, and overall property damage collisions could rise by one-fifth, if the government adopted a public insurance system with social risk pricing.”

Vote Tory.

Just so the nattering nabobs of negativism in the media wouldn’t start asking their usual dumb questions about whether you could really pin all this death and destruction on the fact that some provinces have public auto insurance and some don’t, Mullins helpfully included a table comparing a whole host of differences between publicly and privately insured provinces.

And this is where things get really interesting — and take us well beyond the narrow confines of the insurance question.

Did you know, for example, that if you live in a province with public auto insurance, the rate of violent crime will be 64 per cent higher than it would be if you had the good sense to establish yourself in a more Godly province where the market reigns supreme? The stats for property crime are even more appalling: the rate is 78 per cent higher in provinces with public auto insurance.

Perhaps you wont be surprised to discover that, in socialist havens, the number of “heavy drinkers” will be five per cent higher, household income will be seven per cent lower and there will even be 27 per cent fewer new model cars gracing the roadways of the publicly insured provinces.

Our God even gives market-system-favouring provinces better weather. Consider: precipitation in provinces with public auto insurance is six percent higher than in those without. (There is one anomaly here: Mullins’ report does show private sector provinces get more than twice as much snow — 173 cm to 75 cm per year — but this is probably accounted for by the fact that it’s warmer in hell. . . er, Vancouver.)

So the lessons here are that Our God, as I said, is a private sector kind of God, and, of course, that friends shouldn’t let friends drive while publicly insured.

It could be bad for their — and your — health.

So endeth the lesson.

Stephen Kimber

Stephen Kimber

Stephen Kimber is an award-winning writer, journalist and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel and nine books of non-fiction, including the best-selling Flight 111: The Tragedy of the Swissair...