FOI Request for ICBC

Shweta Verma, student
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
12666 72nd ave, Surrey, B.C.
Canada, V3W 2M8
(604) 961- 1884

October 25, 2018

Privacy and Freedom of Information Coordinator
Insurance Corporation Of British Columbia
217 - 151 West Esplanade
North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 3H9

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I request that you provide me with:

• A detailed list of all the road accident claims in Surrey, B.C. including information about how much ICBC has paid to these claims in year 2017.

In order to avoid photocopying fees, please provide me with electronic copies in any format (word, PDF)- either via email or on CD.

If you have any questions, please contact me at (604) 961-1884 or email me at shweta.verma@email.kpu.ca

Please advise me when the material is ready for release.

Sincerely,

Shweta Verma

Explanation for request:

I was reading a news article from CBC that says that accidents in B.C. increased by 25% from 2014 to 2017 which caused a financial loss of $1.3 billion. The cost of claims in 2017 totalled $4.8 billion, $13 million a day. There were 960 crashes per day and 350,000 in total for that year. Reading this article, increased my interest to gain more information on accidents in recent years. I live in surrey, that's why I am much more willing to know especially about Surrey and From my FOI request, I hope to find out accident claims in surrey and amount paid to these claims. I  also want to compare the total claims in B.C. with that in surrey by comparing the information from that CBC news and this FOI request. 

My FOI request is not addressed to a specific person as ICBC does not provide the name of privacy and Freedom of Information Coordinator.

Animal testing: Cruelty in research labs

photo by Animal people forum

All living species in this world have thoughts and emotions whether it is an animal or a human being. Everyone feels pain when they get hurt. Laboratory testing is one of that painful process where animals are treated with cruelty.

As Manpreet Bazarah said in "Animal testing should be allowed for laboratory research" that animals have similar endocrine and physical glands as humans that helps to make safe medicines and cosmetics but on the other hand, saving one's life by making someone else's life in risk is not humanity.

In a research article it has been said that 90% of drugs fail in human trials that gave fair results in animal tests and out of 93 dangerous side effects of drugs, only 90% have been predicted by testing on animals. This research also revealed that with the use of more than 115 million animals in testing for each year, only 46 medicines were approved in 2017 by the leading drug regulator, the U.S. food and drug administration from which many are for rare diseases. A drug named 'vioxx' used to treat arthritis was safely tested on monkeys and five other animals but caused around 320,000 heart attacks and strokes and 140,000 deaths in the world. Research in this article analysed that only 50% of DNA that regulate genes in mice could be matched with human DNA.

Andrew Rowan in his research 'Avoiding Animal Testing' says:

"Since the mid- seventies, the use of animals has fallen by around 50 percent....by 2050, we might finally see the last of animal use in laboratory"

Testing animals is just a good concept but is actually bad in predicting whether it will work on humans as well. It is nothing else but a misuse to animal life. It is wasteful not just socially and biologically but economically as well. Animal testing costs billions of dollars says 'Kmwhiteo8' in his article and provides alternatives to animal testing for cosmetics giving the example of 'episkin' that is an artificial skin made from human cell. It is much more accurate because it is made up of cells on which the product will actually be used. another alternative to animal testing is 'microdose'. In both these methods, product is actually tested on that species it will be used on.

It is unfair to intentionally cause pain and fear to animals. It is wastage of money, time and resources. In an article, a philosophy professor, 'Tom Regan' at North Carolina State University states that "Animals have a basic moral right to respectful treatment and this inherent value is not respected when animals are reduced to being mere tools in a scientific experiment".

Animals have their own basic rights which are disrespected in laboratories when they are used in research because they are never given a choice of not participating in experiment.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

I chose "cruelty" because Google trends showed that the term "cruelty" scored much higher as compared to the term "inhumanity". Also, i used the word "labs" rather than "laboratory" because while searching on google trends, "labs" came up with higher rate of interest among people than "laboratory".