A recent Globe and Mail article expressed how the new changes in the budget bill is causing riffs in the Senate. The budget bill, proposed by Conservatives are receiving “pushback” from Tories who dominate the Senate. Tories are concerned the bill will change Canada’s insurance industry and a small group of people will be bestowed a “jackpot.” One of the Conservatives on the bill was Diane Bellemare and she is imploring the rest of her fellow senators to look more closely at how the bill plans to make these changes to the insurance sector.

The concern lies in that the bill will target a small group of people that will stand to profit immensely from businesses that have been built up over decades. This would be a direct result from allowing mutual property and casualty insurance companies to go public. Economical Mutual Insurance, a large insurance company in Canada, helped inspire the overlooked provision and their $1.6 billion in worth hinges on the result of the debate.

Based out of Waterloo, Economical Mutual Insurance forced Ottawa to work on new rules after they decided to be demutualized—the first ever mutual property and casualty insurance company to do so in Canada.

At first EMI thought they should only allow their 943 policyholders with voting rights to benefit from the initial public offering or sale, the Globe and Mail article points out, and it would have netted each policyholder over $1 million in assets. However, after Finance Canada spoke up, EMI responded to the feedback and plans on sharing their assets on a broader scale with its more than 800,000 policyholders. Of course the distribution will not be given to each policyholder on an even basis, so before EMI moves forward they are waiting to hear from Ottawa about the new rules so they can better move forward on sharing with larger groups.