Quebec Superior Court authorizes lawsuit against automatic student insurance
Former McGill University student leads class action lawsuit
The Quebec Superior Court has authorized a class action lawsuit brought by a former McGill University student seeking damages over the student insurance opt-out system.
A Université de Montréal student first filed the lawsuit against Desjardins Sécurité financière (DSF) and the Alliance pour la santé étudiante au Québec (ASEQ), also known as Studentcare, in June 2023.
However, it is now an anonymous West Island resident and former McGill University student Giovana Feth representing the group.
According to the court decision, the group is seeking “an injunction to end automatic student membership” and is “demanding the reimbursement of insurance premiums paid by members, as well as compensatory, moral, and punitive damages.”
They are also demanding that universities implement an opt-in student insurance system where students can choose to enroll in health coverage, claiming that an automatic enrolment system is illegal. They argue that students often only have a few weeks to opt out, and that the insurers and universities fail to properly inform students of the “optional nature” of the insurance.
La Presse reported on Aug. 6 that a new document was submitted to the court on Aug. 4. The new document asked for the lawsuit to include 32 additional postsecondary schools that face similar opt-out insurance systems. The document says that ASEQ represents over 400,000 postsecondary students per year.
The lawsuit originally sought to target all student health insurance contracts in Quebec that have ended since Dec. 19, 2019, but the court mandated that the lawsuit be limited only to such contracts at Concordia and McGill.
Concordia and McGill are now defendants in the lawsuit along with DSF and ASEQ, having collected insurance premiums from students and delivered them to the insurers.
However, the universities claim in the court decision that they simply play an “administrative assistance role,” and are not involved in the insurance contracts.
Joey Zukran, the group’s lawyer, told La Presse that he hopes to reach a settlement with the defendants within two months to avoid involving too many schools in the lawsuit.
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