Severe weather caused more than $2.4B in insured losses in 2025: insurance bureau

A damaged backyard shed in Peterborough, Ont.. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Drost

Insured damages caused by severe weather last year topped $2.4 billion, the Insurance Bureau of Canada says.

According to calculations by Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc., the March ice storm in Ontario and Quebec topped the list of most expensive weather events in 2025, followed by May wildfires in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and storms across the Prairies in August.

Flooding in southern British Columbia and parts of Alberta added to insured damage totals last year.

The bureau said 2025 is the tenth costliest year on record for weather-related losses in Canada.

“Severe weather events continue to intensify,” said IBC president and chief executive Celyeste Power in a news release.

She said two decades ago, insured damages seldom exceeded $500 million per year. But now, annual costs of weather events surpassing the billion-dollar mark have become the norm.

“This shift demands that we fundamentally rethink how we build, plan and restore communities across our country,” she said.

Power said the country needs to integrate household resiliency against severe weather, which will be more cost effective than paying to rebuild after every disaster.

Annual insured damages due to severe weather between 2006 and 2015 totalled $14 billion, adjusted for inflation, the bureau said. That nearly tripled to $37 billion between 2016 and 2025.

Weather-related insured losses last year were significantly lower than the damages recorded in 2024, which hit a record high of $9.4 billion in 2025 dollars. A slew of weather events racked up damage totals in 2024 including the Jasper, Alta., wildfires, flash floods in the Greater Toronto Area, a hailstorm in Calgary and remnants of hurricane Debby in Quebec.

The second most expensive year for insured losses was 2016 at $6.5 billion, in 2025 dollars, when devastating wildfires tore through Fort McMurray, Alta.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 20, 2026.