Tallying the cost of climate change

Photo: Parliament of Canada

South Okanagan-West Kootenay MP Richard Cannings

I’ve written here before about the true cost of climate change, but new information has made it clear that it would be good to revisit this topic.

Some of those costs are difficult to put numbers on. We are increasingly feeling the emotional costs of summers full of wildfire evacuations, as the residents of the Slocan Valley dealt with this year. But the direct economic hit from loss of livelihoods or homes can be quantified to some extent.

As the (federal) NDP critic for Emergency Preparedness and Climate Resilience, I often meet with representatives from the insurance industry. The Insurance Bureau of Canada recently released a report that illustrates the broad impact that extreme weather events caused by climate change has on the Canadian economy. While those numbers are for insured losses only, they are still mind-boggling.

The summer of 2024 set all the records for weather-related losses in Canada. The massive flood events in Ontario and Quebec, a huge hailstorm in Calgary and the destruction of Jasper by wildfire added up to more than $7 billion in insured losses. The uninsured losses are likely many times higher.

The dollar total is 10 times higher than the annual average from 10 to 20 years ago. These losses came from 228,000 insurance claims, four times the annual average over the last 20 years. This year’s losses are about double those of last year, when West Kelowna and the Shuswap suffered massive damage due to wildfires and are also greater than 2016, when a wildfire destroyed Fort McMurray.

These totals don’t include the disastrous freeze that interrupted an unnaturally mild winter in January 2024, essentially wiping out the Okanagan grape and soft fruit crops for the year. That event cost the B.C. wine industry almost a half billion dollars in direct losses.

Not only are the numbers staggering, but the trend is very worrisome. The five worst years for weather related insured losses in Canada have all occurred in the last 12 years, and the last three years have all been in that group.

The insurance industry is obviously worried and is passing on those losses to consumers through rising insurance rates and increasingly restricted coverage. So those costs spread through the budgets of all Canadians.

What we need to be doing as a country, and the federal government in particular, is invest in adaptation measures that will reduce the direct impacts of climate change. We need to be upping our efforts in wildfire fighting; fire-smarting homes, yards and communities; and reshaping dikes and riverside neighbourhoods to avoid flood damage.

As Craig Stewart, vice-president of the Insurance Bureau of Canada, said in a recent statement, “Insurers are now paying out more in claims for a single event than the $1.9 billion that the federal government has allocated to climate adaptation over the past decade.

"Canada needs to get ready for the next disaster. This is not the time for finger pointing, this is the time for governments and the private sector to work together to better protect Canadians and our communities. This is a whole-of-society challenge and requires all leaders and stakeholders to come together to develop a national action plan to ensure Canada is better protected. We all have a role to play in helping communities prepare for and recover from severe weather events.”

I’ve been asking the federal government to dramatically increase funding in climate adaptation to make it match the scale of our disaster relief efforts. It doesn’t make sense to be spending billions of dollars in cleaning up destroyed communities when we could be investing money that would literally save the heartache of lost homes, businesses and livelihoods through preventative measures.

I’ve asked for a national wildfire fighting force that could be deployed as needed to areas facing clear wildfire danger before the fires start. Unfortunately, the government has responded with no interest at all or only partial measures that don’t stand up to the task at hand.

And, of course, we have to redouble our efforts to reduce our carbon emissions so that the pace of climate change doesn’t relentlessly increase each year. But even if we stopped all those emissions tomorrow, we will live with the increased impact of the climate crisis for centuries to come.

Richard Cannings is the NDP MP for South Okanagan-West Kootenay.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.