Source: CCC
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Floods can severely damage homes and infrastructure, costing billions of dollars
Flooding is the most common and costly disaster in Canada. In the past decade, floods have averaged nearly $800 million in insured losses annually (Insurance Bureau of Canada 2024).
Insurers estimate that for every dollar in insured losses from flooding, there are two dollars in uninsured damage that are borne directly by households and taxpayers (Honegger and Oehy 2016).
Over 1.5 million homes across the country are located in areas of high flood risk (Ness and Florez Bossio 2024). Eighty per cent of Canadian cities are built, in whole or in part, on floodplains (Public Safety Canada 2022).
As extreme rainfall and coastal flooding increase, the annual costs of flood damage to homes and buildings in Canada could grow three to five times by mid-century—amounting to over $5.5 billion—and reach as high as $13.6 billion by the end of the century (Ness et al. 2021).
On July 16, 2024, in Toronto, nearly 10 centimetres of rain fell in three hours, leading to massive flooding across the city. Early estimates put the cost of this flooding at $1 billion in insurable losses, with the total costs likely several times higher (Pereira 2024).
Canada has experienced five billion-dollar-plus flood events since 2011 (Insurance Bureau of Canada 2023; Manitoba Flood Review Task Force 2013; Insurance Bureau of Canada 2024; Public Safety Canada 2023).
Many Canadian homeowners believe they have insurance that will pay for repairs and rebuilding after overland flooding, but only about 10 to 15 per cent of households are actually covered (Posadzki 2017).
The households facing the highest flood risk in Canada either can’t get flood insurance or can’t afford it because the rates are so high (Public Safety Canada 2022).
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