Find the error. The Ministry of Culture classifies heritage houses. Newly vested with this same power, which they are slow to use, the regional county municipalities (RCM) are making an inventory of the buildings built before 1940 on their territory in order to better protect and enhance them. And what are insurers doing during this shift? They are quietly but surely disengaging from this market, chilling present and future owners in the process, in addition to putting Quebec’s collective heritage at risk.
It is not a question here of heritage that has been neglected, even abandoned, but, for the majority, of houses inhabited and pampered by owners aware of their uniqueness. Despite this, more than half of the owners of old houses consulted by the association Friends and owners of old houses of Quebec (APMAQ) have difficulty in being properly insured, we learned The duty this week.Some suffer from serial refusals, others come up against artificially inflated premiums for partial coverage stuffed with exclusions.
As the phenomenon is growing, several RCMs and municipalities seized Quebec of the problem last December. The Minister of Culture, Mathieu Lacombe, listened attentively to their grievances. Along the way, he even gave a scratch to the Insurance Bureau of Canada (BAC), judging that the discussions could go better on the front of the real estate heritage. But the minister can do more.
Several specialists believe that part of the solution could be found in public insurance acquired in addition to private insurance, as is already common in the agricultural world. Remember that the CAQ government has also been inventive when it came to finding solutions to ensure the habitable future of certain flood-prone areas. He could imagine similar mechanisms to ensure the future of heritage houses.
It is abnormal that insurers, through their practices, diminish or even contradict what Quebec and the municipalities choose to highlight. Aren’t these old houses the privileged individual witnesses of a past that we wish to better combine with the collective present? For this, it is imperative that the heritage designation ceases to be perceived as a foil.
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