A home damaged by flooding in Merritt, B.C., on Dec. 9, 2021.JONATHAN HAYWARD/The Canadian Press
Severe weather events in Canada caused insured losses of $2.1-billion last year, making 2021 the sixth-costliest since 1983, the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) said in a statement on Tuesday.
Floods in British Columbia in November, where heavy rains caused mudslides and stranded thousands of people, caused the highest amount of insured damage, at $515-million. That was followed by a hailstorm in Calgary that caused flash flooding and dangerous driving conditions, at $500-million.
“In today’s world of extreme weather events, the new normal for yearly insured catastrophic losses in Canada has become $2-billion, most of it due to water-related damage,” Craig Stewart, vice-president, federal affairs, for the IBC, said in the statement, adding that this compares with an average of $422-million a year between 1983 and 2008.
He called on the government to allocate “robust funding” in this year’s federal budget to implement a National Adaptation Strategy that seeks to build resilience against the impact of climate change.
The IBC data come on the heels of a report published on Friday by the Bank of Canada and the country’s financial regulator that said that delaying actions to prepare for a transition to a low-carbon economy exposes financial institutions and investors to “sudden and large losses.”
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