Figure 5: Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements Costs from 1970 to 2015

For more than a decade, the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) has been reporting a rise in claims as a result of the increase in severe weather events related to climate change. Specifically, the IBC notes that catastrophic losses (insured losses of $25 million or more from natural disasters) have increased dramatically over the last decade (IBC, 2016). IBC’s 2016 statistics (in 2015 dollars) illustrate this pattern. Over the 21-year period from 1983 to 2004, insured losses averaged $373 million a year. In the decade from 2005 to 2015, the annual average loss more than tripled, growing to $1.2 billion a year. In 2018 alone, insured damage for severe weather events across Canada reached $1.9 billion. Notably, 2018 has the fourth-highest amount of losses on record. However, unlike other years where single significant events such as the Quebec ice storm in 1998, the Calgary floods in 2013 or the Fort McMurray wildfire in 2016 contributed drastically to insured losses, in 2018 no single event caused the high amount paid out for losses.