Damage from various severe weather events made 2022 the third worst year on record with losses from severe weather adding up to $3.1 billion.
The Insurance Bureau of Canada information from Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. highlights the financial costs of a changing climate to insurers, governments, and taxpayers.
Various weather events caused damage in 2022, including Hurricane Fiona, the Ontario and Quebec derecho, the Eastern Canada late-winter storm, the Western Canada summer storms, and the Eastern Canada bomb cyclone. The Derecho on May 21, 2022, caused $1 billion in damage in Ontario and Quebec. Then severe storms in Ontario and Quebec June 16 and 17 caused $50 million in damage.
The Bureau said every community across Canada is at heightened risk of natural catastrophes as 2022 saw disasters from nearly every part of the country.
"Canada is increasingly a riskier place to live, work and insure," said Craig Stewart, Vice-President, Climate Change and Federal Issues, Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC). "Governments have spent far too little attention to adaptation in the discourse over climate policy. This spring, the federal government needs to lead the way in finalizing a National Adaptation Strategy and boldly funding both community-level infrastructure and property-level retrofits that increase resilience to floods, windstorms, heat events and wildfires."
"In particular, we're seeing early signs that property insurance may become less affordable or even unavailable as global reinsurers shift capacity away from riskier countries," Stewart added. "Now is the time for Canadian insurers and governments to partner on a National Flood Insurance Program to ensure Canadian homeowners remain financially resilient in the face of these growing number and severity of events."
The highest loss year on record was 2016, which saw $5.96 billion in losses from a wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta. The second worst year for claims was 21013, with $3.87 million worth of insured damage due to the events, Alberta floods, Toronto are flooding, and the December GTA ice storm.
Catastrophic losses due to extreme weather in Canada routinely exceed $2 billion annually. Before 2008, Canadian insurers averaged only $456 million a year in severe weather-related losses.