Canada releases first national-level disaster risk assessment

The rising frequency and severity of natural disasters is a growing concern.

In recent years, Canadians have seen extreme weather events, like floods and wildland fires, destroy homes, businesses, and critical infrastructure, and leave lasting impacts on communities across the country.

As Canada and the world continue to experience these disasters, it is crucial to increase risk awareness across all sectors of society and to inform decision-making for reducing, preparing for, and responding to them.

The Government of Canada has released the National Risk Profile, Canada’s first public, strategic, national-level disaster risk assessment. It provides a national picture of disaster risks facing Canada and the existing measures and resources in our emergency management systems to address them.

The report examines disaster risks from three of the most concerning hazards facing Canadians – earthquakes, wildland fires, and floods, with a section on the cascading effects of pandemics like COVID-19 on these three hazards.

The report will increase resiliency in a few different ways:

• It provides decision-makers with a consolidated, national picture of disaster risk and associated capabilities to understand how and where to intervene to build resilience.
• It provides Canadians with a better understanding of the risks they face in preparing for, managing, and recovering from emergencies.
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• It helps communities understand the realities of increased disasters, including climate change-associated ones.

The report is based on broad public engagement. It includes input from stakeholders from all sectors across Canada, including representatives of federal departments and agencies, provinces and territories, municipalities, Indigenous organizations and communities, and the academic, private, volunteer, and non-governmental sectors.

In addition to broad public and stakeholder engagement, the National Risk Profile uses two evidence-based methodologies to assess Canada’s current level of risk to all hazards and inform our collective ability to mitigate their impacts:

• The All-Hazards Risk Assessment methodology measures the impact and likelihood of hazards threatening Canada. This helps raise awareness and reduce the vulnerability of people, property, the environment and the economy.
• The Emergency Management Capability Assessment methodology allows for consistent evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the Canadian emergency management system across different hazards and over time.

Key Findings

The key findings of the report are summarized below:

Earthquakes

While most earthquakes in Canada are minor and cannot be felt, a major earthquake would be very costly. Data indicates, for example, that a severe earthquake in British Columbia—9.0-magnitude—could result in $75 billion in losses and a similarly probable event in the Quebec City-Montreal-Ottawa corridor could result in $61 billion in losses.

Stakeholders identified hazard monitoring, early warning and the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge as gaps in the Canadian emergency management system related to addressing earthquakes. These areas with gaps were identified based on a systematic assessment of the capabilities on the Canadian Core Capabilities List.

Better information on earthquake risk and greater access to information on preparing for earthquakes are required. Various initiatives are underway across the federal government to reduce earthquake risk, including actions on mitigation, community planning, and providing a better picture of what a future earthquake would look like.

Wildland Fires

The impacts of climate change are causing longer and more intense fire seasons, costing the economy billions. Efforts are being made to improve Canadians’ awareness of how to face wildland fires in their communities and to help build more resilient infrastructure that can withstand wildfire’s effects.

There remain gaps in public awareness of wildland fires and our ability to respond to wildland fires at the national level. There is also inadequate inclusion of Indigenous knowledge in wildland fire management and response.

Work is being undertaken to help identify the landscapes and communities at the most significant fire risk and which mitigation investments would be most effective. This includes an improved understanding of fire processes and the development of operational tools to help make informed decisions on wildland fire risk.

Floods

Flooding is Canada’s most costly and frequent hazard, causing economic, social and environmental burdens for society. Climate change will likely increase the frequency and severity of flooding in many areas of Canada, further exacerbating its impacts.

There are gaps in coordination to address flood risk across government orders, a patchwork of flood data and information available to help mitigate flood risk, and, again, low levels of awareness amongst Canadians. A significant proportion of the population is exposed to flooding, and more important information on flood risk, including forecasts and alerts, will help all levels of government mitigate the effects of flooding.

The Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements and Emergency Management Assistance Program have seen a significant increase in response and recovery costs since their inception.

Since the launch of the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements program in 1970, it has contributed more than $7.9 billion to provinces and territories, over 63% of which was paid out in the last ten years. There has been a steady increase in reimbursements from the Emergency Management Assistance Program to First Nations communities in the previous three decades due to disaster frequency and severity increases.

Disaster insurance losses

Insurance losses have increased steadily since 1983, most notably in the last decade. From 1983 to 2019, insured losses from catastrophic disasters totalled roughly $26.8 billion, not adjusted for inflation.

The new normal for yearly insured devastating losses in Canada is $2 billion due to water-related damage. Compare this to 1983 and 2008, when Canadian insurers averaged only $422 million yearly in severe weather-related losses. In 2021 alone, insured losses from catastrophic weather events in Canada amounted to $2.1 billion.

The next phase of the National Risk Profile will focus on heat events, hurricanes and space weather. These three hazards were selected given their high impacts on public health, critical infrastructure, the economy, and ecosystems.

The Federal Government is pursuing several measures to improve the resiliency of Canadians in the face of the rising frequency and costs of disasters, including:

• We are investing $31.7 million to create a low-cost flood insurance program to protect households at high risk of flooding without adequate insurance.
• We are investing $48.1 million over five years and $3.1 million ongoing to identify high-risk flood areas and implement a modernized Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements program.
• Working collaboratively with partners to implement the shared priorities laid out in the country’s first National Adaptation Strategy to help Canada be more resilient and prepare for the impacts of climate change. Strengthening national resilience to disasters is one of the five focus areas of the Strategy;
• Working with provinces and territories, Indigenous Peoples, municipalities, and the emergency management community to implement the Emergency Management Strategy to help Canada better prevent, mitigate, predict, prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies and disasters;
• Investing $164 million over five years working with Provinces and Territories to increase Canada’s resilience to flooding by expanding the Flood Hazard Identification and Mapping Program;
• Integrating climate resilience into the National Building Code and researching to factor climate resilience into the design of buildings; and
• Providing funding for infrastructure projects through the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund to help communities better withstand the potential impacts of hazards.

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