Hey Victoria Supermoto and Shuswap
You are going to have to redo your calculations
maybe, just maybe there are 50000 off road bikes of that 25 percent will rarely see the light of day, buried in a garage somewhere, a farm or cabin.
I cant speak for ICBC but I dont know why they would want anything to do with the off road licencing and particularly the insurance. Insurance is already well covered by the private sector and no one in government has the appetite to make mandatory ICBC insurance for off road vehicles, too much grief for too little reward.
As for the tax dollars ICBC only collects that for the BC taxman, so ICBC does not benefit directly from the tax. Just because you did not pay tax does not mean you don't have to pay tax. I have had this conversation on this site several times, PST is payable on a private transaction, the only difference not is they have a way of collecting, of course this is only on used bikes on private sales, as those of us that bought from a dealer paid the tax already.
I dont know how your business operates but for me to get the kind of paperwork filled out that ICBC will require, 49.00 would be considered a break even for me. You local ICBC agent will take a cut then the registry need to be maintained with the rest of the money. Yup I agree its going to be expensive, but we as off road riders had all the opportunity in the world to get organised and manage ourselves, but decided we would be pirates and only worry about our own little kingdom. The snow mobilers manage themselves and quite successfully, but its too late for that model.
We have no one else to blame for whats coming down the pipe now.
Am I looking at the bigger picture? I dont know, but I have ridden in many states that require registration and the off road community thrives and has good representation. To me it was a foregone conclusion we had to go the route of registration and licencing, particularly with the huge growth of ATVs and now SxSs (we are outnumbered 4 to 1)
You can count on enforcement, remember who is behind this, BC coroner's office (because we cant seem to take care of our kids) and the non motorised user groups (because they just plain dont like us) we are way outnumbered on this one.
If everyone that said they buy the BCORMA Trail Pass actually did we would have a decent war chest. lets just pretend for a moment
Say we sold only TPs to half of the riders out there that would be 25000 x 45.00 =1,125,000.00 per year with the TP program over 5 years old now, that would be a nice chunk of money to hire the right guys to do the job. But the truth of the matter BCORMA is lucky to sell 500 TPs per year. Not even enough to hire a secretary to answer the phone.
I told all of you guys time and time again, 100 percent of the TP sales stay within our community, and when the government gets involved we will not see one penny. This is starting to sound like a "I told you so"
Its too late to stop Registration and Licencing. but its not to late to double down and buy another (or first) BCORMA Trail Pass, with a little money and luck we can help shape the rules that will be imposed on us. Or you can just sit on this and other sites and complain how the government is sticking it to us all the time. Either way a small group of volunteers will keep on arguing with the government on our (your) behalf
Stepping off the soap box now
Tom
