![\"Damage](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/iStock-1498226172.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Canada\u2019s disaster tracker has logged a string of new catastrophes this spring and summer \u2014 Prairie hailstorms, Alberta flooding, and, most recently, flash flooding in the Montreal region. The insured losses are still being counted.<\/p>\n
But according to Glenn McGillivray, managing director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR)<\/a>, Canada\u2019s biggest catastrophe problem isn\u2019t understanding disaster risk.<\/p>\n It\u2019s acting on what it already knows.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know exactly what to do,\u201d McGillivray says. \u201cWe\u2019re just not doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n Rebuilding the same risk<\/p>\n Researchers already know which upgrades dramatically reduce future losses for nearly any peril Canada faces, McGillivray says. <\/p>\n \u201cWe know the features \u2014 the best three, four or five features to put in a rebuild per hazard \u2014 that will help prevent a repeat of a loss.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, homes and businesses are frequently rebuilt exactly as they were.<\/p>\n \u201cYou look at a hailstorm in Calgary, we\u2019re putting things back with vinyl siding and non-impact-resistant shingles,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen the industry rebuilt Fort McMurray after the 2016 fire, we put it back with vinyl siding. We just continued to put risks back exactly the way it was.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of the problem, he argues, is that homes are built to be cheap upfront rather than cheap to maintain.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got our priorities backwards,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to save money up front. And then when the builder walks away, it costs the homeowner a lot of money to fix or replace. We know how to build where we won\u2019t have to fix much and won\u2019t have to replace much. We just don\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Free money, left on the table<\/p>\n One of the more surprising barriers, McGillivray says, is the homeowners themselves.<\/p>\n \n Many clients treat risk management as an annual renewal exercise. Effective, year-round risk engineering helps them build resilience. <\/p>\n More than 40 Canadian municipalities offer basement flood subsidy programs to help residents pay for devices like backwater valves and sump pumps. Similar FireSmart <\/a>subsidies exist to help homeowners in wildfire-prone areas assess and reduce their risk.<\/p>\n Yet even when governments offer to pay for resilience upgrades, many homeowners don\u2019t participate.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of those programs are not doing well. The take-up is very, very poor,\u201d he says. \u201cPrograms where people are, in fact, given free money to make their homes more resilient \u2014 they\u2019re not accepting that money.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s blunt about where responsibility sits. \u201cI don\u2019t think the insurance industry is pushing hard enough for resilience,\u201d he adds. \u201cNothing\u2019s been going on on the building-code side. Very little happening on the land-use planning side. We\u2019re just not taking this seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n Municipalities with \u201cno skin in the game\u201d<\/p>\n McGillivray also points to how development approvals get made. When disaster strikes, the bill typically lands on private insurers and provincial disaster assistance \u2014 not on the municipality that approved the building in the first place.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have no skin in the game. They have no risk,\u201d he says. \u201cThey can approve a subdivision that\u2019s carved out of a conifer forest that would go up like jet fuel if it ever ignited, or put a subdivision on a floodplain, on flood fringe, or in a soup bowl \u2014 a low point of a city that floods a lot in heavy rainfall.\u201d<\/p>\n Montreal is a case in point, he says: \u201cMontreal is almost completely a combined sewer system. It\u2019s almost all decades old. And not a lot is being done about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Insurers are moving \u2014 slowly<\/p>\n Some insurers are starting to abandon the old approach of rebuilding with identical materials.<\/p>\n \u201cThey used to rely on the old contract wording that says they had to put things back using the same materials as before,\u201d McGillivray says. \u201cThey\u2019re starting to understand that doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"_Sonia](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Sonia-Sache-Head-shot-1-scaled.jpg\" "\\"_Sonia")
<\/p>\n