Jun 12, 2025
Canada faced one of its most expensive years for insured losses in 2024, with severe weather wreaking havoc on both homes and businesses. While homeowners bore the brunt of the damage, commercial properties also suffered massive losses, pushing the total insured damages to over $1.7 billion — the second-highest in the country’s history.
"Thousands of businesses felt the impacts of severe weather last year. The historic amount of damage in 2024 underscores the escalating financial risks Canadian businesses face from catastrophic weather events," Liam McGuinty, vice-president of strategy at the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC), said in a statement.
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"Canada's insurers have been on the ground since these events took place and continue to assist businesses across the country with financial support and navigating the recovery process. These severe weather events have caused not only physical damage, but have also disrupted business operations, supply chains and the flow of goods and services in the Canadian economy.”
The vast majority of commercial losses in 2024 occurred over the course of 24 days during the summer, when wildfires, floods and hail storms ravaged communities across the country.
The costliest events of 2024
The costliest weather event in 2024 for commercial insurance was the wildfires in Jasper, Alta., standing at $650 million. The municipality was hit the hardest and accounted for nearly 40% of extreme weather losses to commercial property in 2024.
Next was the remnants of Hurricane Debby across Eastern Canada at $360 million, the Calgary hail storm at $280 million and the Ontario and Greater Toronto Area flash floods at $190 million.
Since 2010, over 132,000 businesses in Canada have suffered damage and filed insurance claims due to extreme weather events, according to Catastrophe Indices and Quantification.
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History of commercial insurance losses in Canada
Last year, 2024, is only behind 2016 as the costliest year for commercial insurance, thanks to the Fort McMurray wildfires in Alberta which totalled $1,918,420 in losses. 2013 is third, with $1,720,028 in losses primarily thanks to the Southern Alberta floods and GTA floods.
Rounding out the top five is 2022, with $945,632 in damages attributed to Hurricane Fiona and the derecho in Ontario and Quebec; and 2020, in which Prairie hail storms caused $782,183 in commercial losses.
"Canadian governments must move swiftly to make targeted investments in infrastructure that defends against floods, improve land-use planning rules that ensure homes and businesses are not built on flood plains and that FireSmart best practices are followed in communities in high-risk wildfire zones,” said McGuinty.
“These actions would not only protect the physical assets of the businesses that are at highest risk, but would also safeguard the broader community, contributing to a competitive, responsive and resilient commercial insurance market that provides solutions for businesses.”
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Nicholas completed his master's in journalism and communications at Western University. Since then, he's worked as a reporter at the Financial Post, Healthing.ca, Sustainable Biz Canada and more. Aside from reporting, he also has experience in web production, social media management, photography and video production. His work can also be found in the Toronto Star, Yahoo Finance Canada, Electric Autonomy Canada and Exclaim among others.
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