West Vancouver considers ‘user fee’ for emergency rescues

The district municipality of West Vancouver is considering a ‘user fee’ if you get into a car accident and crews have to rescue you from your crushed car with the jaws of life, even if the accident is not your fault. Let me repeat that: if you get into a car accident, and your car gets crushed, you’ll get charged $970 to get rescued. Further clarification: the proposed fee is nine hundred and seventy dollars, as in ‘just shy of a cool grand’; not nine dollars and seventy cents.

The argument, apparently, is that such rescues are expensive, and that the person who needs to be rescued should have to foot the bill. This is actually a rather imprecise formulation: as I understand it, the city’s contention is that the party responsible for the costs should be the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, which, as the only licencing authority for motor vehicles and their drivers in the province, would pass the cost on to the insured driver. This idea has apparently been floated before as part of a plan to increase the revenue of the West Vancouver fire department, but the council is apparently serious about it this time.

Surely there are other, better places where the city could look for money rather than from the wallets of people who have just been in life-threatening accidents. In fact, I think I can come up with a few off the top of my head. Seeing as how West Vancouver is one of the most affluent cities in the country, perhaps they could consider attempting to cut government waste, increasing government efficiency, and possibly—gasp!—enacting a modest tax hike to pick up the cost? (Actually, the best commentary I heard was on CBC Radio One today: someone proposed a sliding scale for rescues from burning buildings: $1000 if you want to be rescued from the first floor, $2000 for the second floor, and so forth.) It makes absolutely no sense to penalize innocent people, charging them a thousand dollars to get extricated from their smashed car, especially when they were not at fault. Emergency services—especially emergency rescuing—should be provided to all people without a price tag attached. This is pure and simple greed combined with a silly refusal to consider efficient and reasonable solutions.