Damages and Repairs Could Make British Columbia Canada’s Most Expensive Natural Disaster | The Canadian News

While it will still be some time before British Columbia officials can provide preliminary estimates of how much it will cost to repair damage from this week’s floods, it could be the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history.

Highway bridges must be replaced, rail sections and entire communities rebuilt, meaning the cost of the flooding is expected to be unprecedented in British Columbia history.

“There is a significant economic impact from this that grows larger each day these routes leave,” said Kent Fellows, assistant professor of economics and associate program director for the Canadian Northern Corridor Program at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy, Global News.

Right now, Canada’s costliest natural disaster occurred at Fort McMurray, where wildfires resulted in insurance claims worth $ 3.7 billion. However, the final cost, including repairs and rebuilding, was nearly $ 9 billion.

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The floods in southern Alberta generated $ 1.7 billion in insurance claims, but the real cost was nearly double.

In 1998, ice storms in Quebec and Ontario cost the insurance industry $ 1.3 billion.

“Between 1983 and 2008, the insurance industry paid, on average, about $ 422,000,000 in severe weather damage across the country,” said Rob de Pruis, director of consumer and industry relations for the Insurance Office of Canada.

He added that in the last decade, that number has risen to $ 2.1 billion, on average across the country. Last year, the country experienced around $ 2.4 billion in damages related to severe weather events.

“Before this severe weather event in British Columbia, we still had more than $ 1.3 billion in severe weather claims, just this year so far this year,” added de Pruis.

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British Columbia residents now have access to residential overland flood coverage, and De Pruis said about half of the province’s residents have added this optional coverage to their policies.

However, about five percent of homeowners would not qualify for coverage because they are in “high-risk flood areas.”

Flood losses in the province also go well beyond critical infrastructure.

The Port of Vancouver is essentially isolated from the rest of the country and it is estimated that between $ 250 and $ 500 million worth of merchandise travels through the port every day.

Experts say those costs are not captured in traditional disaster models.

“The economy is there to meet the needs of the people, that is what we are talking about and this will affect both the export side and the import side and interprovincial trade,” said Fellows.

“It is also Canada’s gateway to the Pacific, so it also affects our Pacific partners. It also affects some of our trade with the United States because we do so much of that trade on the west coast of the United States. “

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British Columbia Prime Minister John Horgan said the province has the fiscal capacity to rebuild what was lost.

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But Fellows said a key development here will be building more resilient infrastructure.

“Canada, in the last 40 to 50 years, we have not done much, or any long-term planning in our interregional and international infrastructure, things have just happened when we need them,” he said. “Before 1970, this country thought a lot about long-term planning for decades or more than half a century, centuries.

“So I think both at the provincial and federal level we should seriously think about how to make sure our infrastructure is resilient to climate change, how we plan to expand the Canadian economy, hopefully we want it to expand, we want to improve quality. of life and how we seriously think about layoffs. “

Transport Minister Rob Fleming said on Friday that while there is no estimate of the total cost of rebuilding the province, it will be “very significant.”

“And they must be built to a higher standard,” he added.

– with archives by Aaron McArthur

© 2021 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.



Reference-globalnews.ca

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