After wildfires, flooding and a major ice storm, the amount of insured damages from severe weather in 2025 reached well into the billions once again.
According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, insured damage exceeded $2.4 billion.
The numbers come from Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc., which is under licence to IBC.
“What we see is that the severity and frequency of severe-weather events continue to intensify and this has been trending for years now,” said Maximilien Roy, IBC’s vice-president of strategy. “We can see that in the past decade, it has tripled since the previous past decade.”
Annual insured losses between 2006 and 2015 totalled $14 billion, yet the following decade of 2016 to 2025 soared to $37 billion. The IBC adds that the average number of insurance claims has nearly doubled during this same time frame.
Among the various severe weather events in 2025, the Quebec and Ontario ice storm of March 28 to 31 saw approximately $490 million in insured damages. The Flin Flon, Man., and La Ronge, Sask., wildfires in May totalled about $300 million, with the Calgary hailstorm hitting $160 million. The August severe storms in the Prairies totalled $235 million, while the series of atmospheric rivers in B.C. last month hit $90 million.
The $2.4 billion makes 2025 the 10th-highest year on record for insured loss.
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While that is a drop from 2024, which was the most expensive year, Roy says that placement doesn’t mean things are improving.
“If you look at the numbers on a longer scale of time, two decades ago, insured losses seldom surpassed about $500 million a year,” he said. “Today, annual costs exceed more than a billion dollars. So we can certainly see a trend…. It’s less than 2024, but still it is in the history of our country.”
As a result, the IBC says it’s been calling on governments of all levels to take more action to improve both where and how housing is built.
Roy said this includes building homes away from flood-hazard areas and changing building codes so that the right material is used and would not be as prone to damage.
“We know that affordability is really critical, but the most expensive home you can build is the one you need to rebuild once or twice,” he said.
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