Severe storms that swept across Manitoba and Saskatchewan on June 9 and 10 caused more than $728 million in insured damage, according to initial estimates from Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ).
The storms brought tornadoes, hail, damaging winds, torrential rain, and flash flooding to communities across both provinces. Separately, flooding in Montreal and the surrounding area on June 20 and 21 resulted in more than $409 million in insured damage.
The losses land just ahead of the second anniversary of the July 2024 flash flooding in Toronto and other parts of southern Ontario, now estimated to have caused more than $909 million in insured damage according to updated CatIQ figures. That Toronto flood was one of several catastrophic events contributing to a record $8 billion in insured losses during the 2024 summer of catastrophe, the costliest season for severe weather losses in Canadian history.
Liam McGuinty, vice-president, Federal Affairs at the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC), said these events highlight the growing financial and human costs of flooding across the country.
"Flooding is causing more damage, affecting more Canadians and placing growing pressure on households, communities, insurers, and governments alike," he said. "These recent and past catastrophes are a reminder that flood risk is no longer a future challenge, it is a current reality affecting Canadians from coast to coast."
In Ottawa, residents continue to recover from the severe Canada Day storm that triggered widespread flooding, damaging homes, forcing evacuations, and causing road closures. IBC representatives have been in the community offering insurance guidance, and the organization has launched its Virtual Community Assistance Mobile Pavilion (V-CAMP) helpline to provide affected residents with real-time, one-to-one support.
The Manitoba and Saskatchewan event is consistent with a broader shift already reshaping how Canadian insurers view the Prairies.
The region around Calgary and extending toward Edmonton is particularly prone to hail and tornado activity, and Alberta alone has absorbed more than $5.5 billion in insured hail losses over the past five years, including a 2024 Calgary hailstorm that generated more than 130,000 claims.
Canada experiences an estimated 230 tornadoes annually, ranking second globally by frequency, with most occurring across southern Ontario, the southern Prairies, and southern Quebec, and some research suggests Canada's tornado and wind hotspots are shifting eastward toward more densely populated parts of the country.
Federal disaster assistance payments, which help cover public infrastructure costs from these events, averaged $881 million annually between 2010 and 2024 and are projected to climb to $1.8 billion annually between 2025 and 2034, according to Statistics Canada.
Over the past 20 years, flood and water-related insured losses have increased more than 300% compared with the previous two decades, according to CatIQ, and flood and water-related events have accounted for 39% of insured catastrophic losses in recent years. Since 2009, insurers have paid an average of more than $2 billion annually in catastrophic weather-related claims, including record losses of $9.4 billion in 2024 and $2.4 billion in 2025.
Allstate Insurance Company of Canada reported in February 2026 that home insurance claims caused by external water sources, including heavy rain, overland flooding, and sewer backup, rose 94% in 2025 compared with the prior year, with external water damage accounting for nearly a quarter of all home insurance claims that year.
Home insurance premiums have followed suit, rising as much as 45% over the past six years, according to rates.ca, while reinsurance costs for Canadian property portfolios climbed 25% to 30% during the 2023 renewal cycle, and up to 50% to 70% for portfolios with recent losses, according to TD Economics.
National flood insurance program remains stalled despite mounting losses, and this pattern of rising regional losses is exactly what that stalled backstop was designed to address
Canada still lacks a functioning national flood insurance backstop, despite the federal government committing to the program in the 2023 and 2024 budgets and pledging $450 million toward an April 2026 launch target during the 2025 election campaign.
As of mid-2026, IBC says there is still no confirmed timeline for delivery, with the federal government continuing to design the program and working through how a federal backstop would function alongside flood coverage already offered by the private insurance market.
IBC has proposed a federal reinsurance entity, structured through a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation subsidiary, intended to extend affordable overland flood coverage to the roughly 1.5 million Canadian households currently at highest risk, including many in the same Prairie and flood-prone regions absorbing this year's losses.
To meaningfully reduce flood losses and help keep insurance affordable, IBC is calling on governments to accelerate action across several fronts. These include steering new home construction away from high-risk flood plains through stronger land-use planning, requiring cost-effective mitigation measures where building in flood-prone areas cannot be avoided, and modernizing wastewater and stormwater infrastructure so cities can manage heavier, more frequent rainfall.
IBC is also pushing for expanded home retrofit programs, wider provincial adoption of the federal government's Flood Risk Finder tool, strengthened building codes reflecting current and future climate conditions, and clearer public education to help homeowners, renters, and businesses understand and reduce their flood risk.
"Flooding is Canada's costliest and most pervasive climate risk," McGuinty said. "Over the last decade, insurers have significantly expanded the availability of overland flood insurance and continue to help homeowners recover and rebuild after disasters. But insurance alone cannot solve Canada's flood problem. We need all orders of government to accelerate investments in adaptation and flood-risk reduction to better protect Canadians and build more resilient communities."
Until that federal backstop moves from design to delivery, the pattern this week's storms represent, rising losses concentrated in regions the private market already knows are high-risk, is likely to keep repeating each severe weather season.
