So far, four weather-related disasters have occurred in Canada in 2024, resulting in $7.7 billion in claims paid by insurers.

Jeff Goy, CEO of Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Co., said Tuesday that when he started in the industry about 35 years ago, that total was a tenth of this year’s amount.

Manitoba was fortunate to have been spared a serious event in 2024 — such as the Jasper, Alta., wildfire, a major hailstorm in Calgary, flash flooding in southern Alberta, Ontario and major flooding in Quebec — but the province can’t expect to be immune.

In this context, the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction has chosen the capital of Manitoba as the site of its second center in Canada.

On Tuesday, the 2,500 square foot Climate Resilience Center (191 Broadway) was officially opened to the public.

The multidisciplinary disaster reduction research center at Western University (Ont.) came to Winnipeg in part because one of its members, Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Co., had excess space. But, according to Paul Kovacs, founder and executive director of the ICLR, the city and province have long been held in high esteem because of important decisions made over time to mitigate losses from extreme weather.

Kovacs said the province’s decision to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the Red River Floodway, which has saved an estimated $40 billion in damages over decades, is seen as the one of the best examples of community loss reduction measures in the country, if not the word.

Another decision was made by the city council in 1979, requiring every new house in the city to be equipped with a backwater valve.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars in costs and tens of billions of dollars to avoid losses,” Kovacs said. “That’s what it’s all about.”

The idea is that the Climate Resilience Center will serve as a destination for insurers, reinsurers, brokers, homebuilders, building code officials and others to learn about best practices for becoming more climate resilient.

Interactive exhibits include an intricately scaled “dollhouse” showing the right and wrong ways to manage water distribution in a home. A diorama shows how items such as untreated wood shingles and flammable materials near a home can increase the risk of damage from a wildfire.

(Fire Smart Canada’s Magda Zuchara said Tuesday that about 90 percent of building damage from wildfires is caused by burning embers, not a wall of fire.)

Few still question whether severe weather is on the rise; Kovacs said the ICLR now has data collected over several decades.

“There are some deep-rooted long-term trends that are not going to go away,” he said. “This is the question of the next generation.”

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report for 2024 says the No. 1 risk is the impact of extreme weather – and will continue to be so over the next 10 years.

The Climate Resilience Center is another attraction in the city. Although it is an unremarkable street-level space in an old downtown office building (the former Wawanesa management offices), demonstrating simple, accessible technologies could go a long way to mitigate the damage.

Wawanesa and ICLR officials believe this is a message that more and more people will want to know.

“This center will be a game-changer for community leaders, businesses and property owners by getting the information they need to make their infrastructure and properties more resilient to climate change-related weather,” Goy said.

The ICLR has been around for almost three decades. It has an area of ​​1,000 square feet. center open to the public in London, Ontario, but understands the need for greater public education and exposure to the issues.

“When we started 28 years ago, it was a small part of what insurance companies did. Now it’s an important role,” Kovacs said.

For example, Wawanesa just launched the third year of its Community Wildfire grants, in partnership with ICLR. Part of Wawanesa’s Climate Champions program, it provides $2 million annually to support people on the front lines of the fight against climate change.

Tours of the ICLR Climate Resilience Center can be booked and inquiries about borrowing the exhibits can be made at iclr.org/climatecentre.

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Martin Cash
Journalist

Martin Cash is a business journalist/columnist who has been working in this field since Free press since 1989. He graduated from the University of Toronto and studied journalism at Ryerson (now Toronto Metropolitan University). Learn more about Martin.

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