Contact: Andrew P. Loewen and Celia C.S. Fergusson; Fillmore Riley LLP (Manitoba, Canada)
On June 14, 2012, an Act to amend The Insurance Act of Manitoba, aptly titled "The Insurance Amendment Act”, received Royal Assent. The Insurance Amendment Act introduces sweeping changes to both the form and content of The Insurance Act.
As of December 2013, none of the amendments has been proclaimed, meaning that they are not yet the law in Manitoba; however, we anticipate that they will be proclaimed, at least in part, over the coming year.
The amendments include dozens of substantive changes and hundreds of stylistic changes to render the Act easier to read and understand. In this article, we focus on three of the more interesting substantive amendments.
The first amendment is the removal of Part IV of the Act, Fire Insurance. Structurally, the Act currently has a part of general application to (almost) all types of property insurance (Part III) and a part devoted to Fire Insurance (Part IV). The Insurance Amendment Act deletes Part IV but shifts its content into Part III, which remains applicable to (almost) all types of property insurance. The result is that sections of the Act which currently only apply to policies falling under Part IV will apply to virtually all property policies once the amendments are proclaimed.
