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jacta alea est! -Julius Caesar, 49 B.C.

Nova Scotia’s kangaroo court on the province’s auto insurance cap appears to be following the predetermined fate of a conviction.

Make no mistake, the NDP government is following due process. The government promised it would be reviewing the cap as part of its campaign platform. The premier was voted in with a mandate to review the cap. The government is seeking public consultation on a discussion paper about the cap.

And yet, despite this fig leaf of public deliberation, one can’t help but feel The Emporer is wearing no clothes when it comes to Nova Scotia’s cap. Anything less than the severe watering down, if not the outright abolition, of the Nova Scotia cap seems a foregone conclusion.

A few telling signs:

First, the premier who promised the review is a personal injury lawyer and thus part of a profession that has a vested interest in removing the cap.

Second, there was a very narrow window of opportunity for public input on the province’s discussion paper. The paper was posted online in the middle of January 2010, and called for public input by Feb. 15, 2010.

Third, Nova Scotia undertook its review of the cap’s “fairness” in spite of — and maybe even because of — the conclusion by several appellate courts that the cap was constitutional (and hence did not discriminate against those to whom it applies).

The Nova Scotia Appeal Court, for example, has already found the province’s cap did not discriminate against minor injury victims. And the Supreme Court of Canada essentially handed the Nova Scotia government a second reason not to proceed with a cap review, by denying an appeal of the Alberta Court of Appeal’s determination that Alberta’s cap was constitutional.

And yet, the government not only proceeded with its review, it accelerated the process.

Perhaps the most obvious sign of how this review is going to shake down can be found in the province’s discussion paper itself.

In Concerning the Cap on Pain and Suffering Awards for Minor Injuries, the province more or less concedes there is absolutely no cause for a review — that is, if you take seriously what Nova Scotia’s cap is supposed to be doing (i. e. keeping insurance premium costs down for all of the province’s consumers).

“Since the introduction of the cap, there has been a measurable decrease in the average premiums for private passenger vehicles,” the province’s discussion paper reads. “Premiums have also been relatively stable.”

So why is the government reviewing the cap?

“There are many factors that may have contributed to lower average premiums since 2003,” the province says. “The precise impact of the cap, if any, is difficult to determine.”

Oh really? If it wasn’t the cap, then what was responsible for the decrease in average premiums? We don’t know, because the discussion paper doesn’t say.

Apparently, the government says, “over the past six years, some automobile accident victims who have been injured and subject to the cap on pain and suffering awards have expressed concerns about fairness.”

Like who? And how many? Again, we don’t know. The government provides no formal survey results, nor does it give any numbers defining the scope of this public disaffection. This is a widespread, burning public resentment, by the way, about which the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) and the area’s insurance brokers have heard nothing. It must have been an awfully quiet majority, since you’d think the insurance industry would have been the first to hear people complaining about it.

And so it would appear that “the die is cast” (jacta alea est), as Julius Caesar said when he crossed the Rubicon river, thus putting himself at war with Caesar Pompey and the Senate of Rome. From this vantage point, there appears to be no turning back for the government of Nova Scotia, which is preparing to follow the destiny that it laid out in its own 2009 electoral script.

Can we honestly say it will be a surprise to anyone in the insurance industry that a deductible in Nova Scotia will soon follow this so-called “review” of the cap?

Since the outcome of this set drama piece appears to be entirely predictable, perhaps the insurance industry would be wise to start lobbying Nova Scotia’s opposition parties now to replace the NDP’s deductible with a cap the moment the Dexter Administration is voted out of office by angry citizens who have had their insurance premiums increased.