Local store fronts are under water in downtown High River, Alta.Chris Bolin/The Globe and Mail
More than five million work hours were wiped out during the June floods that devastated parts of Southern Alberta, according to Statistics Canada figures.
But thanks to the advantages of modern technology, those economic losses didn't hurt merger and acquisition activity too much.
The flooding had "little or no impact" on deal-making, said Nicolas Marcoux, national deals leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "We closed on deals from remote."
The major productivity losses identified by Statscan were concentrated in resources companies, but other industries such as finance and businesses services also posted net losses in hours worked, which hurt the country's gross domestic product. The impact on Canada's June GDP could be more than 0.3 per cent, Benjamin Reitzes, senior economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns, said in a note. That's larger than some initial estimates, "since the losses were concentrated in mining, oil and gas," he said.
Mr. Reitzes full table breaks down time lost across various business sectors, and finance falls in the middle with insurance, real estate and leasing.
There's no doubt property and casualty insurers are certainly feeling the impact more directly. The rain and flooding in Alberta cost them about $2-billion (U.S.) – the highest insured loss ever recorded in Canada – according to a recent report by reinsurance company Swiss Re.
To put that in perspective, there was $20-billion of losses related to natural or man-made catastrophes insured across the world last year by Swiss Re's assessment.