For brokers renewing property accounts in British Columbia, new survey data released November 12 by First Onsite Property Restoration confirms what the claims record has shown for years: the province’s highest-risk clients remain structurally underprotected against the peril they fear most. Five years after an atmospheric river displaced nearly 20,000 British Columbians and produced $696 million in insured damage – the costliest single severe weather event in provincial history, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) – the flood insurance gap in the province’s highest-risk communities has not closed.
The survey, conducted by Angus Reid Forum in February among 1,505 adult Canadians, found that 70% of British Columbians are concerned about severe rainfall and flooding, and 41% are concerned about landslides or mudslides – both the highest figures in Canada. Despite that, only 35% have an emergency kit, and just 43% know their local evacuation routes. First Onsite, a property restoration company with operations across North America, commissioned the research as part of its annual weather and property study.
Three in four British Columbians (75%) are concerned about being affected by climate change. The gap between that concern and practical action is consistent across the data.
Jim Mandeville, senior vice-president, large loss Canada at First Onsite Property Restoration, said the 2021 event caught many property owners off guard – including those in areas not traditionally associated with overland flooding.
“Historically, people think this kind of flooding only happens to communities near rivers or on the coast. But 2021 showed that it can happen in more populated areas. People need to be ready for the unexpected, and be prepared to evacuate, live without power and access to potable water for at least a few days,” Mandeville said.
He said the scale of the event was unlike anything he had previously encountered.
“The sheer volume of water was something we never really anticipated. It does rain a lot in this part of Canada. But what people aren’t used to is this much rain all at once and with this kind of intensity. Certainly, in my living memory, I had never seen anything like this,” Mandeville said.
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Southern B.C. flooded again in December 2025, producing close to $90 million in insured damage, according to CatIQ estimates published by the Bureau in January 2026. That figure sits well below the 2021 toll, but it confirms the exposure is recurring rather than exceptional.
Nationally, insured losses from severe weather exceeded $2.4 billion in 2025 – the 10th-costliest year on record – following a record $9.4 billion in 2024, according to CatIQ data cited by the Bureau. Over the past two decades, flood and water-related insured losses have increased more than 300% compared with the previous two decades.
Access to overland flood insurance has improved significantly in that time. The Bureau’s July 2026 market report found that approximately 94% of residential properties are now eligible for overland flood coverage, up from a market that was largely unavailable before 2015. Policy uptake rose from 26% of homeowners in 2017 to more than 70% by 2023.
That progress, however, stops at the properties carrying the most risk. The Bureau estimates approximately 850,000 high-risk Canadian households cannot obtain affordable flood insurance. The remaining 6% of properties ineligible for coverage are concentrated in elevated-risk zones – many of them in B.C. The Bureau has stated that flood insurance reaches 93% of B.C. homeowners but remains unavailable to those at highest risk. For producers in those areas, the advisory weight of that gap falls on the broker channel, a dynamic explored in this publication’s recent analysis of how the flood coverage gap is reshaping broker obligations across Canada.
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That structural gap was meant to be addressed by a national flood insurance program. The federal government committed $450 million toward the initiative, targeting an April 2026 launch. In April 2026, Eleanor Olszewski, Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience, told reporters she could not commit to delivering the program “in the near future,” according to a report by The Canadian Press published April 22, 2026. Public Safety Canada has confirmed that work on the program is ongoing, with no delivery timeline provided.
The delay is a concern the Bureau has raised consistently throughout 2026. As covered in this publication’s reporting on the stalled design process behind Canada’s national flood insurance backstop, the Bureau’s director of federal affairs confirmed in June 2026 that no government timeline was available.
The Bureau’s July 2026 market report also found that roughly 2% of residential properties account for more than half of Canada’s total potential flood losses – a concentration of risk that remains structurally unaddressed without a functioning national backstop.
The First Onsite survey shows that 72% of British Columbians are concerned about whether they are properly prepared for a property-related emergency, and 65% are worried about having to leave their home or community. Nationally, only 28% of Canadians have an emergency kit and 36% know their local evacuation routes.
That concern-to-action gap is widest in the province with the highest demonstrated flood loss on record – and, as this publication’s coverage of regional flood concerns and where the coverage gap falls hardest on the broker channel has shown, it is also the market where producers have the fewest options when clients ask what happens if the worst occurs.
The First Onsite Weather and Property Survey was conducted by Angus Reid Forum between February 20 and 23, 2026, among a representative sample of 1,505 adult Canadians online. The margin of error is ±2.53 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
