Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has announced a province-wide disaster financial assistance program following catastrophic flooding that swept across the province this week.
Kinew made the announcement during a visit to Stonewall, a town of roughly 5,000 people just north of Winnipeg that received more than 255 millimetres of rain in a single night. He had previously announced financial assistance for western Manitoba, where several rural communities declared states of emergency after floodwaters burst riverbanks and swamped homes and businesses. That program has now been expanded to cover any Manitoba resident affected by the storms.
"No one in rural Manitoba is going to be left behind. Your provincial government is going to make sure that there are the resources to help you clean up, to rebuild and to recover from these terrible storms that we've been seeing recently," Kinew told reporters on Thursday while touring Stonewall.
The floods have exposed a coverage gap that is causing significant distress among homeowners across the affected communities. Many residents across Manitoba are discovering that their home insurance policies do not cover overland flooding, a protection that must be purchased separately and that many say they never knew was missing from their coverage.
The Insurance Bureau of Canada, which has launched its Virtual Community Assistance Mobile Pavilion helpline in response to the disaster, noted that overland flood coverage is widely available in Manitoba as an optional add-on, but often includes coverage limits and may be unavailable for properties in known floodplains or high-risk areas. The optional coverage typically costs between $100 and a few hundred dollars annually, depending on coverage limits, deductibles and risk profile.
The provincial disaster financial assistance program, activated through the Manitoba Emergency Management Organization, treats the storms from the Swan Valley region to the Interlake as a single provincewide event, assisting with uninsurable damages, response costs and targeted recovery supports for residents who are underinsured or facing financial hardship.
The claims picture is significant and still growing. As of June 10, Manitoba Public Insurance had received 8,000 insurance claims related to hail, water and wind damage, with the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction noting that the event has a multi-peril footprint including at least two confirmed tornadoes.
By June 12, that figure had climbed to approximately 20,000 claims, putting the event on course to shatter the province's previous single-event record of 24,000 claims set in 1996. MPI said it is implementing a phased approach to speed up service, including early damage assessments to get vehicles into repair sooner.
The Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction said the event appears likely to exceed the $140 million insured loss hail event of August 2023, which previously ranked as one of Manitoba's most costly severe weather events on record.
Beyond residential damage, the storms caused widespread infrastructure disruption. Manitoba Hydro said 1,400 customers in Winnipeg remained without power on Thursday, with crews prioritising downed lines and damage in areas difficult to access with heavy equipment. The utility is also monitoring an overland flooding situation near its Dorsey Converter Station in the Rural Municipality of Rosser, northwest of Winnipeg, a facility that transmits more than 70% of electricity produced in the province. The station continues to operate normally.
The province has cut several highways, including Highway 221 near Dorsey, to relieve water pressure on rural communities, with some roadways buckling under the volume of water.
The Manitoba floods have renewed attention on Canada's broader flood insurance gap. The federal government has been working toward a National Flood Insurance Program designed to extend coverage to approximately 1.5 million households at highest risk.
The Liberal Party pledged $450 million over five years for the program during the 2025 federal election campaign, targeting an April 2026 launch, but Public Safety Canada has not confirmed that timeline.
Brokers in some regions have already reported tighter underwriting, with carriers reducing limits or withdrawing overland flood and groundwater coverage after multiple losses, leaving some homeowners reliant on limited sewer-backup cover or government disaster assistance.
