Ontario Election 2007: Why not make auto insurance an issue again?

It's amazing sometimes how you can forget about something that, only a few years ago seemed really significant. Take the last Ontario election where there was a fair amount of background noise concerning auto insurance. It seems we have pretty much forgotten it all and gone back to accepting the same old high prices.

A line in this post by Sean in Saskatchewan mentioned Saskatchewan's lower car insurance rates. I was also reminded recently of BC's lower auto insurance rates. The common factor in both provinces is that auto insurance is a publicly run system administered by a crown corporation. Now I know that free market ideology says that this simply cannot be, and yet it is.

Now the hacks at the Fraser Institute will tell you that somehow rates are lower in provinces with private insurance, and yet, everyone I know who moves to a jurisdiction with public insurance ends up saving money. They also don't pay attention to Fraser's insistence that public auto insurance kills you (methinks the institute doth protest too much). I'm talking about people who save money who are young and old, male and female. Who's really getting all these savings from private insurance then?

Moreover, we did we in Ontario, after raising a bit of a fuss, go back to accepting higher rates?