Dear Brokers,
On January 9, Quebec's Chambre d’assurance de dommages (CHAD) issued an invitation asking you to take part in a survey designed to find out your thoughts on its mission and its various functions and activities, as well as your opinion on official oversight of the brokerage sector.
In my view, it is essential that CHAD's initiative be placed in a broader context to ensure that you have the tools you need to answer (or not answer) the survey questions in the most appropriate way. If your reading of the survey questions is in line with my own, you will soon realize that the expected results are designed more to defend CHAD's interests than our own.
Let's quickly put things in perspective.
In conjunction with the provincial government's review of the Act respecting the distribution of financial products and services (ARDFPS), the appropriateness of having a dual oversight framework for insurance representatives (administered by the AMF and CHAD) is currently being debated, thus calling into question the essential purpose of either one of those organizations.
In this regard, the RCCAQ has taken a clear position in favour of combining these oversight roles within a single entity. This position reflects our desire for streamlining, efficiency and financial savings, all of which are in your best interest.
What then are we to think of CHAD's survey, which among other things asks us to rank it and the AMF as regulatory bodies and to evaluate each organization's knowledge of our professional practice? It appears that an attempt is being made to discredit one organization in relation to the other. Paradoxically, if we were asked to rank two different insurance representatives in such a way, we would be infringing our code of professional ethics!
Please bear in mind that CHAD's primary mission is to "ensure the protection of the public by maintaining discipline among and supervising the training and ethics of its members" (ARDFPS, section 312). In addition, certain inspection powers are delegated to CHAD by the AMF. How are these aspects of its mission being fulfilled by asking us to take sides in favour of either of the organizations involved in the debate over the dual oversight system?
As an insurance broker, it all feels like a trap. I get the feeling that I'm being used to serve someone else's interests.
CHAD may feel threatened in the run-up to the tabling of Bill 188, but that does not give it the right to use our voices to serve its own interests and justify its own existence. CHAD's strategy is creating more confusion, which we have been vehemently protesting for nearly two years now.
In the end, the answers you provide (or don't provide) to CHAD's survey questions are entirely your own business. However, I strongly urge you to ask yourself whose interests are being served by this survey and to share your impressions and comments with us by email (communications@rccaq.com).
