The Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) is calling on governments to spend more on flood prevention and to give Canadians access to flood risk information.
It points to the September storms in southern Ontario as the latest warning of rising weather losses.
The severe storms that hit the Greater Toronto Area and southern Ontario on September 2 and 3 causes an estimated $563 million in insured losses, according to Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ). The storms brought intense rain, flash flooding, strong winds and large hail, shattering windows, skylights and windshields.
“Flooding of this scale is no longer unexpected, and we cannot continue to respond only after the damage is done,” said Amanda Dean, IBC’s vice president for Ontario and Atlantic Canada.
IBC set out three areas where it wants governments to move faster.
The first is infrastructure. IBC said investment in stormwater, wastewater and drainage systems is the most effective way to reduce flood damage. It estimates Canada’s infrastructure deficit at about $60 billion, and says many communities still rely on systems that weren’t designed for today’s extreme weather.
The second is a shift from recovery to prevention. That includes funding home retrofits such as backwater valves and sump pumps, stronger building codes, and better land-use planning.
The third is access to flood risk information. IBC said provincial governments have yet to make the federal Flood Risk Finder available to residents.
Flooding is Canada’s most frequent and costly natural disaster, according to IBC. Citing CatIQ data, it said flood and water-related insured losses over the past 20 years were more than 300% higher than in the previous two decades.
Ottawa announced in April that technical development of Canada’s Flood Risk Finder was complete. The tool rates flood risk on a four-point scale by address and covers coastal, rainfall and riverine flooding. However, it only returns results in provinces and territories that opt in.
A week after the launch, none had, The Canadian Press reported in May. Quebec said it would not take part because it is building its own tool. Manitoba and Nova Scotia said they were not participating for now. British Columbia was still reviewing the tool, and Ontario did not respond on the record. Emergency Management Minister Eleanor Olszewski said it was not Ottawa’s place to force provinces to join.
IBC welcomed the tool when it was announced. Five months on, its latest statement suggests that, as far as the industry is concerned, little has changed.
The September event isn’t a straightforward flood case. When CatIQ released its estimate, it said wind and hail played a bigger role in the losses than flooding did, although Vaughan, north of Toronto, saw severe flooding. Flooding has still been the main driver of other 2026 events. Pluvial flooding and sewer backup dominated a run of summer catastrophes in Ontario and Quebec, including the June storms in Montreal, which cost insurers $442 million.
For brokers, the three demands bear directly on the price and availability of coverage. Although 94% of Canadian homes now have access to overland flood insurance, the highest-risk properties are the hardest to insure affordably, and clients often don’t know their risk until after a loss.
Address-level flood information would help with that conversation. Brokers could point clients to an official source when explaining flood premiums or recommending sewer backup and overland cover. Until provinces opt in, the industry’s own models remain the main source of property-level flood risk for most Canadians, and those aren’t public.
