The MAAC Insurance Policy used to be available for download from the MAAC website. Recently that was taken down and all that remains is an Insurance Certificate. The Insurance Certificate tells you that an Insurance Policy is in place – but absolutely nothing about what is covered by the policy.
The actual Policy is important because that tells you what is really covered (or not!). Glib statements about coverage, no matter what the source, are of no consequence. Only the Policy will tell you what is covered. The last version that this writer downloaded was admittedly very confusing – there were literally more pages of amendments than of the actual policy itself – it needed a comprehensive re-write to incorporate the amendments into the main text, but it is still the only source that will tell the insured what coverage he/she has.
Some weeks ago (February 3rd) a member of MAAC couldn’t find the Policy on the website so he asked MAAC’s Operations Manager, David Petrie, where he could find it, or instead, could he be sent a copy of the policy. Mr. Petrie responded that he didn’t have a copy but he would try to get one. The member heard nothing back so, about a week ago – March 16th, he reminded Mr. Petrie that he had asked for the policy and that flying season was approaching so he needed to know just what he was covered for. He got no response to that.
Having not been able to gain access to the Policy, this morning (March 22nd 2023) the member in question telephoned the Insurance Company and asked them to send him a copy of the policy. They adamantly refused to do so. When he pointed out that he was a person who was insured under the policy and had a need-to-know what coverage he had, he was told that he had to contact Mike Anderson.
So now even our insurance policy is a deep, dark, secret. Heaven help the poor member who believes he has certain coverage, only to find out – after an incident has occurred – that he isn’t covered for that. A few years ago, that same insurance company reduced our coverage so that it only applied to MAAC-registered flying sites. This was not announced to the membership – it was just changed, without our knowledge. The chairman of our Insurance Advisory Group at the time – the group that agreed to this policy change, but didn’t find it important to tell the members about it – was an employee of the Insurance Company. Luckily, the policy was available on the website at that time and the change got noticed. A hue and cry resulted and the policy was quickly changed back. Now we can’t see the policy except on an individual basis – if Mike Anderson allows it!
As a matter of interest we went to the MPPD 04 document on the MAAC website – it is entitled “MAAC Insurance Coverage Summarized”. In there we found this passage:-
4.5 Members are also insured while flying in the Continental United States and worldwide subject to certain conditions. For a detailed explanation of conditions see the most recent copy of the MAAC Insurance Policy.
We are advised to go to the Insurance Policy for accurate information (very good advice) – but the policy is not available from our website or from the insurance provider!
We have an Insurance Advisory Group. One of the useful things that they could be doing – besides making sure that our insurance is obtained through a competitive bidding process (we don’t know when that last happened) – is to get the Policy re-written so that it is no longer a mish-mash of conflicting amendments. In an age of electronic document keeping there really is no excuse for continuously adding codicils.
Besides this lack of transparency on a matter that is crucial to every single member of MAAC, we are led to wonder – what recent change in the insurance are we not supposed to know about? We also wonder – is the current chairman of the Insurance Advisory Group, or are any other members of that group, now or at any time in the past, an employee of the Insurance Company that sells us our policy? Even a past employee can have a direct conflict in that their pension may depend upon the continued profitability of the company they used to work for*.
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We would like to point out that this conflict of interest continues to exist within the Safety Advisory Group and the Transport Canada Advisory Group – where an ex-employee of NavCan is on both of those groups. That person has even claimed an existing employment status but that has not been confirmed.