Heavy rain, carried across the Pacific Ocean from tropical storms, caused a series of floods, debris flows and mudslides that hit communities in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island.
Experts, industry observers and local politicians hope the record-shattering $8.5 billion in weather-related insurance losses in Canada in 2024 will be the wake-up call needed to get government and individuals to make climate resilience a priority.
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That needs to be a priority that is backed by more money, they say.
“We are not doing anything fast enough here. We are just toying around the edges, kicking the can down the road. And we don’t seem to learn a darn thing,” said Glenn McGillivray, managing director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction and an adjunct professor of disaster and emergency management at York University in Toronto.
McGillivray said the trend is going to get worse as climate change is forecast to bring more frequent and severe weather events. More money is needed, he said, including more funding for the national climate change adaptation strategy.
“We have to recognize that putting money into this now saves money in the long run,” said McGillivray.
Governments should also examine setting building code standards that require new homes to be built with fire-resilient material and with fire-smart principles, said McGillivray.
The 2024 total is nearly triple the total insured losses recorded in 2023 and 12 times the annual average of $701 million in the decade between 2001 and 2010.
Aaron Sutherland, the Insurance Bureau of Canada’s vice-president, Western & Pacific, said the best thing to address the financial and human impact of these events is to reduce the risk.
The tools are known and include creating firebreaks near communities, increasing fire suppression capacity, and improving dikes, waterway infrastructure and storm sewers, he said.
“This really needs to be a wake-up call. We have to begin to truly invest in efforts to begin to reduce that risk,” said Sutherland. “There is no longer any excuse for continuing to put Canadians in harm’s way by permitting development on floodplains or in interface wildfire zones without adequate protection.”
Last month, Postmedia News reported that more than three years after deadly flooding devastated parts of B.C., the three most hard-hit communities still don’t have the funding needed to properly upgrade their flood protection.
And while the province has put up some money for aspects of the three communities’ proposed projects, it’s a fraction of what is needed.
Dylan Kruger, a City of Delta councillor who chairs Metro Vancouver’s flood resiliency committee, said the latest insurance cost figures are a great reminder that the most fiscally responsible way to deal with these events is to be prepared and have the infrastructure in place ahead of time.
“As staggering as some of the costs appear for dike upgrades and flood mitigation, it is significantly cheaper than the devastating costs of rebuilding when these events do hit critical infrastructure,” said Kruger.
Kruger noted, however, that local governments have the least ability to pay for building climate resilience, noting they can only raise money through property taxes and fees. Delta is a good example of that. Its annual tax revenue is $400 million and needed dike upgrades are estimated to cost $2 billion, he said.