Canadian insurance companies have had to extend $2 billion to cover the cost of damage caused by the unleashing of the elements over the past year in the country.
According to the annual report of the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC), storms, floods and fires cost at least $2.011 billion in 2021, making the last year the sixth costliest in the country’s history.
Costliest climate disaster goes to the ‘atmospheric river’ that dumped hundreds of millimeters of rain on British Columbia in mid-November, leading to floods and mudslides that lasted at least six dead.
The insurable damage associated with these torrential rains approached $515 million, an amount which is however far from reality since many damaged buildings were not covered, given their construction in an area deemed to be at risk of flooding.
Another particularly costly climatic hazard, the hailstorm that hit Calgary on July 2 also cost insurers half a billion dollars. This is the second year in a row that hail has proven costly in metropolitan Alberta, after causing $1.3 billion in damage during a storm on June 13, 2020.
The destruction of Lytton by a forest fire, in the wake of the establishment of an absolute temperature record in the country in this small village of British Columbia, has meanwhile cost approximately $ 102 million.
Worse and worse
The total cumulative amount in 2021 is down slightly from the $2.3 billion in cumulative insurable damage in 2020, but has nevertheless been on an upward trend for the past few years, IBC noted. That said, the cumulative sum in 2021 remains far below the record of 5.4 billion reached in 2016, due to the fire that razed part of Fort McMurray.
“The new standard for insured catastrophic losses in Canada, most of which are due to water damage, is $2 billion a year. Comparatively, in the period from 1983 to 2008, Canadian insurers recorded an average of only $422 million per year in claims related to severe weather events,” said Craig Stewart, Vice President of Federal Affairs for Baccalaureat.
“We have to adapt now. Achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 is a fundamental step in limiting future risks from climate change,” he continued, calling on governments to take more action to tackle climate change.