The Canadian Climate Institute says without reducing development in high-risk wildfire and flood areas, provincial costs could more than triple by 2030.
The province should steer housing investment to low-hazard areas, as financial losses from new builds in flood and wildfire zones in B.C. are projected to soar over $2 billion a year by 2030 — the highest in Canada — a new climate change report says.
B.C. faces the steepest bill compared with other provinces, the authors say, projected to make up more than two-thirds of new national losses by the end of the decade.
For instance, the report says nearly 90 per cent of Canada’s wildfire risk to new housing is projected to happen in B.C.
Annual wildfire damages alone in B.C. could more than triple by 2030, increasing from roughly $400 million a year now to nearly $1.5 billion a year, the report says.
Then there are the flood losses. New housing development in flood zones in the province could add up to $1.1 billion in losses by 2030, the report says.
One of the lead authors, Sarah Miller, a B.C. resident, said the report looks at the risk to new housing in an area, assuming CMHC requirements for housing stock are met.
Miller said the report also doesn’t name examples of specific cities or towns in B.C. where they think development should be redirected, citing confidentiality agreements with insurance companies and private flood modelling firms that contributed to the results.
However, it does show that out of the 20 Canadian municipalities where new homes are expected to be most at risk to wildfire by 2030, 16 are in B.C. Those are in the Thompson-Okanagan, Kootenay, Cariboo and northeast regions of the province.
Flooding risks are high in the Lower Mainland and southwestern B.C.
“One of our findings is that even within relatively risky areas like those regions, there is still a fair bit of land that is lower risk on which housing could be built, and you could avoid most of those losses, but you just really need to look carefully, and you need to have detailed hazard maps to inform planning in those communities in particular,” said Miller. “One of the pieces of the puzzle is densification in relatively lower risk areas.”
Miller said B.C. should create provincial rules to redirect new development to safer ground. For more than two decades, the province has left regulation to local governments, which often face technical and financial barriers, she added.
“Other provinces like Ontario and Quebec set standards at the provincial level, where they deem new housing too risky to be built … and we know that’s effective,” she said.
A spokesperson for B.C.’s Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Ministry said staff were looking into a response to the report.
“What makes B.C. so beautiful and such a special place to live, also makes it more dangerous. We have a lot of development in forested areas, and a lot of development in high risk flood areas,” said Miller. “I think that makes it even more important that the government is really careful about setting standards.”
By redirecting just three per cent of new homes away from the highest-risk flooding areas to safer ground, the authors estimate government could save nearly 80 per cent of all losses by 2030.
“For flooding, about six per cent of the highest risk homes are responsible for almost 97 per cent of the losses … for wildfires, it’s similarly concentrated,” said Miller.
“Governments can still build the housing supply they need. They just need to make sure that that small percentage of potential new homes are built on safer ground, rather than in the riskiest areas.”
The report makes five recommendations, including that federal, provincial and territorial governments steer housing and infrastructure investment to low-hazard areas and away from high-hazard areas, and that they strengthen policies to allow them to do so.
The authors also suggest all levels of government reform disaster assistance programs to deter risky development and update hazard information and mandate its disclosure in real estate transactions.
The final recommendation is for the federal government to support Indigenous communities to build climate-resilient homes in safe areas.