IBC calls on governments to improve infrastructure

The Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) is calling on Canadian municipal, provincial and federal governments to improve urban infrastructure so as to mitigate property damage caused by storms in an age of climate change.

“The Insurance Bureau of Canada will insist in the months to come that governments launch an extensive effort to rebuild the basic water and sewage infrastructure of our cities,” IBC president and CEO Mark Yakabuski said in a speech to the Empire Club in Toronto. “Systems that are decaying underground and that were originally built for much more modest precipitation patterns will simply not suffice in the age of climate change.

“Our infrastructure needs to be rebuilt and restored to a standard of performance to accommodate the kind of frequent severe weather than comes with global warming. And I tell you, we have no time to lose.”

Yakabuski noted the January ice storm in 1998 cost Cdn$2 billion in today’s dollars, and the August 2005 rain storm in the Toronto and southwestern Ontario area cost homeowners and their insurers about $500 million. Given the increasing severity of the weather patterns, Yakabuski said, governments must do their part to mitigate damages arising from climate change.

“I say this because without mitigating measures,” Yakabuski said, “the burden of costs related to climate change could well overwhelm the global insurance system.”