Editor:
For isolated seniors living in Pender Harbour, losing your driver’s licence can be a death sentence.
Over the next several years, B.C. is replacing all care cards with photo identification and chip technology. Your licence and care card info will soon be combined in one new BC Services card.
In spite of government assurances, separate BC Services cards are only available if you don’t drive. ICBC will not give you two cards if you drive. To renew your driver’s licence, apparently ICBC now feels free to grill you for your private medical information.
To be sure, ICBC is entitled to assess risk. However, when medical information, insurable risk assessment and licensing powers converge in the hands of one ICBC official with dubious educational credentials, unfairness and conflict of interest are unavoidable.
As a retired local teacher, I am not confident about the medical judgment of people behind local ICBC desks. My advice? Refer ICBC to your doctor.
This summer, a 65-year-old friend in Powell River casually confessed to being a diabetic in the ICBC office. He was told he would need a $185 doctor’s visit for certification, immediate answers to a medical questionnaire and then wait some weeks for a licence. “No interim licence,” he was told.
I saw it firsthand a few days later: a disgraceful medical interrogation of a vulnerable senior who was applying for a driver’s licence renewal in Sechelt. No private office, no advocate to translate complex health questions, no advice about her rights, no guarantee that the authority demanding answers had a right to the information.
I think someone with a legal background needs to act to prevent these government abuses to seniors.
Joe Harrison, Garden Bay
