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VICTORIA — The B.C. government will not raid the Insurance Corp. of B.C. for dividends for at least the next three years, as it seeks to stabilize the embattled public auto insurer’s finances and avoid future rate hikes for basic auto insurance.

ICBC chairman Barry Penner said he’s received assurances from top ministers that they will no longer take hundreds of millions in dividends from from the Crown auto agency’s optional business, as part of a series of reforms to try to stabilize ICBC’s finances and avoid the worst-case scenario of a 42 per cent compounded basic rate hike by 2020.

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“We are not anticipating any dividends to be paid from ICBC throughout the life of the fiscal plan; that’s three years,” Penner said in an interview Thursday. “The ministers of finance and transportation have made that clear to us that that’s not something we need to plan for.”

The government has taken $1.2 billion in profits from the optional insurance side of ICBC’s business since 2010, when it changed the law to allow itself to siphon money from the corporation and use it for general revenue.