New Canadian homes could be too risky to insure as weather changes, experts say

financialpost.com:

Canada needs to create 3.5 million more affordable housing units, but the government could create a new crisis altogether if it isn’t strategic in how it chooses to address the issue, experts say.

Most of the discussion about the housing crisis focuses on building green homes, said Craig Stewart, vice-president of climate change and federal issues at the Insurance Board of Canada, but there’s not enough emphasis on building “resilient” homes. And that could create problems with insurance down the road.

“The way that we build those homes and where we build those homes needs to be carefully contemplated, so the new owners of those homes don’t face challenges in the next decade,” he said. “We need to be careful to avoid creating another crisis.”

The federal government has plans to build 100,000 new homes through its Housing Accelerator Fund, but any new homes constructed need to be extreme-weather proof, Stewart said. The recent wildfires in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories show that extreme weather is becoming more common. Insurance claims from catastrophic natural events have been trending upward since 1983, and totalled $3.1 billion in 2022.

“Insurers do ascribe the increase in severe weather events to climate change. They believe there is a direct correlation, particularly for wildfire, drought and extreme precipitation events,” Stewart said. “There’s no way to account for that than through these events we’re seeing today.”

Roughly six to 10 per cent of Canadian homes already have a flood risk so high that insurers won’t come near them, prompting the government to announce a plan to create a national flood insurance program. Uninsured homes are bad news for homeowners, who will have to absorb the cost of