2019 Agenda

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), led by the Municipal Climate Innovation Program (MCIP), is proud to be hosting the CatIQ Conference half-day workshop on February 4th. With over 80% of Canadians living in municipalities, disasters have a major impact on where the majority of us live, work and play. This interactive workshop and Dragons’ Den style panel will focus on how municipalities respond in terms of mitigation, emergency response and recovery using real-life case studies shared by MCIP supported municipalities. Participants will then have the opportunity to pitch their solutions to a panel of Dragons. Stay tuned for line-up of speakers and Dragons.

The conference will begin with an overview of natural and man-made catastrophes that occurred in 2018. This comprehensive review will include a chronology of events, geographic footprints of impacted areas, related media and insured loss estimates provided by CatIQ.

Some elements of the capital markets, such as Property & Casualty insurers, have been well engaged for many years regarding how to incorporate climate change and extreme weather risk into their operations. Through recent initiatives catalyzed under the direction of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) Staff Notice 51-354 Report on Climate Change-Related Disclosure Project, climate change has now drawn the attention of a broader dimension of the capital markets – namely institutional investors, securities commissions, credit rating agencies, mortgage market of banks, and Life & Health insurers. This session will examine next steps that are required to help tangibly translate climate change and extreme weather challenges into the day-to-day workings of each of these sectors of the capital markets, thus building on the positive momentum of the TCFD and CSA 51-354.

An alignment of the atmospheric and oceanic environment, including warmer than normal sea-surface temperatures, resulted in 2017 being the costliest hurricane season ever in the USA (in terms of economic damage). The changes in the climate are resulting in warmer oceans, higher sea-levels, and heavier rainfalls. Furthermore, a recent study suggests that hurricanes may be moving slower in a warmer climate, resulting in even higher impacts as storms pass more slowly over populated areas. This session will review the impacts and lessons learned from recent landfalling hurricanes, and discuss changes in future risks, including the threats from these storms to Canada.

NIAC, the Nuclear Association of Canada, is a domestic nuclear insurance pool of Canadian Property/Casualty Insurers and Reinsurers has developed a multi-faceted, Made in Canada Claims Administration System.

The Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act (NLCA) entered into force in January 2017 that broadened heads of damages for eligible claimants and increased Operators limits of liability to $1Billion. This change has significantly increased funds available and the need for a new claims response approach.

While the CNSC regulates and monitors civic nuclear power, it is the responsibility of the Nuclear Operator to manage emergencies on their site and the Provincial Government’s responsibility to provide emergency response to the public off site. NIAC offers insurance coverage and value-added expertise such as emergency claims response. Collaboratively, these stakeholders provide community resiliency in the unlikely event of a nuclear incident.

NIAC brings the complex world of nuclear to the complex world of insurance by delivering an innovative system for managing high frequency low touch claims. This session focusses on preparing for and responding to a man-made catastrophic event.

What factors lead individuals not to protect themselves against low-probability high-consequence events until it is too late? The errors that individuals exhibit in deciding not to purchase insurance or invest in loss reduction measures prior to a disaster can be traced to the effects of six decision biases: myopia, amnesia, optimism, inertia, simplification and herding. Two guiding principles for insurance and a behavioral risk audit can assist in designing strategies to encourage property owners in hazard-prone areas to prepare for extreme events. Using concepts from choice architecture coupled with economic incentives, I will propose how the private and public sectors can encourage or require those at risk to protect themselves against future disaster losses.

Increasingly, the climate change debate is part of the dialogue surrounding catastrophic weather events, including floods, fires and severe weather impacting Canada. This session will bring together experts from the scientific and insurance communities to explore emerging research on how climate change may be impacting extreme weather events, and how the insurance industry is responding to a changing landscape of risk. Our panelists will discuss how we can translate data and research into actionable insight, to continue to build resiliency and recover from weather catastrophes in Canada.

Are you embracing new Technology, or will you and your business be left behind in the digital revolution? Today, technology is making it possible for information to be communicated more rapidly and efficiently, and making images, sound and text far clearer and better defined. The question now becomes how do we embrace this change? What steps do we take to guarantee that these new technologies aren’t just used as toys and instead become business enablers – saving time and money, enhancing productivity, and ensuring public safety. The objective of this session is to help us all understand better how the adoption of new technologies can and will impact the public and private response to disaster. To help us think this through, we are proposing to take a closer look at three distinct categories… communication, prediction and the response to catastrophic events. Our panelists will discuss and highlight current and proposed initiatives, that are being undertaken to ensure that when disaster strikes, we are better able to gauge the impact through new modeling systems for forecasting or predicting future events. We will also discuss the use of targeted communications vehicles to warn the public in the effect areas through social media, and new emergency alert systems. Lastly, we will discuss how we can (potentially) better assess damages to property, in real time, through use of drones, satellite technology, or even via user-friendly app-based estimating devices which will enable claims companies to engage the insured in the inspection process - to streamline that process and enhance the customer experience.

Every year municipalities and communities across Canada are faced with extreme and often devastating catastrophes. This distinguished panel will shine a light on how municipalities are preparing and adapting (or not) to recent disasters caused by fire, flood and wind.

Disruptions to critical services, and the infrastructure that supports them, can significantly impact the health, safety, and wellbeing of Canadians. Coastal erosion, reduction in ice cover, thawing permafrost, and higher temperatures increase risks to transportation, trade, energy, health services, and food and water security. Current systems were designed based on historical data, standards, and codes that do not reflect a changing climate. They were not intended to accommodate the adverse effects of future extreme weather events or slow onset changes amplified by climate change. Costs related to these types of events are increasing and could cost Canada $21-$43 billion per year by 2050. In 2018, the British Columbia wildfire season was the largest on record in terms of hectares burned (over 1.25 million hectares). In early May 2017, a strong and prolonged precipitation event caused historic floods in eastern Ontario and western Québec. The flooding caused thousands of people to evacuate their homes, and even more were affected by the flooding. The response to the flooding required over 2,000 Canadian Armed Forces personnel to be deployed to assist in relief efforts. The 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire displaced 90,000 people, destroyed approximately 2,400 homes and other buildings, and caused disruptions in local economic activities. With insured losses in excess of $3.5 billion, this fire was the costliest insurable loss in Canada's history. Preparing Canadians for a changing climate and maintaining critical services will require effective emergency planning and infrastructure that can withstand the impacts of climate change. This will be increasingly challenging as extreme weather events escalate and require industry, the not-for-profit sector, academia, and all levels of government to work together.

In this fireside chat Jason Thistlethwaite and Henk Ovink will discuss Henk Ovink’s view on living with water in relationship to climate change. Why the need to change our perspective to deal with water in relationship to climate change? Which lessons are to be learned in how to prepare cities to cope with these extreme weather conditions? How do the Dutch do this? By joining forces we can prepare for climate change factoring in heavy rainfall, periods of drought and heat, and the impact of potential floods. Climate-proofing requires efforts on the part of a range of public and private parties. Spatial adaptation must become a self-evident component of the physical activities in urban and rural areas. In order to reduce the vulnerability of built-up areas to extreme weather conditions and the impact of a potential flood, climate-proof and water-resilient planning must become a self-evident element in spatial (re)developments, management, and maintenance. When defining objectives for a climate proof city the following questions may arise: weighting the costs and benefits, how often do we find it acceptable that flooding of a street in a neighborhood occurs? And how often is it acceptable in a shopping street where damage risk is higher? What can we do to keep the area from becoming more vulnerable? What do we want to do to make our area more resilient in case of a calamity? Which functions or buildings have to operate at all times? Do we want to prevent cellars from flooding?

How can you act if you don’t know? Raising Flood Risk Awareness and Action through Effective Communication

Canadians typically are unaware of their flood risk, and are not preparing through home protection, emergency preparedness, or flood insurance. Information is available through many credible sources, but simply providing information is not enough. Residents want to understand what flood risk means for them, and the efficacy and cost of solutions to reduce this risk. This panel will explore how we can empower Canadians with realistic, solutions-oriented flood risk information to drive action towards personal, home, and community-level resiliency.

Codes and standards are building blocks that ensure our structures are sound, our public is protected, and our systems run efficiently. In short, they are a protective shield around you in a very complex world. They are essential to government, industry, and consumers, are effective tools towards achieving predictability and reliability, and can support policy objectives.

As climate change alters how we need to function in the built environment, codes and standards are tools that will help stay ahead of this change, and as industry works to manage risk in this new normal, understanding the role standardized solutions plays has never been more important.

This session outlines the Canadian codes and standards network, how standards and guidelines are developed, and examples of real world solutions being implemented to tackle climate change.

At the 3rd annual event that took place in February 2018, insurance experts presented the total losses and insurance gap for earthquakes in western Canada and eastern Canada; the losses would be well into the tens of billions in the east or the west. In 2019, we will hear from many voices in the financial sector on how mortgages would be handled in the event of a catastrophic earthquake in Canada.

Wildfires are burning bigger, hotter, faster and with increasing intensity thanks in part to climate change and to the fact we have aggressively fought forest fires for more than a century. These mature forests are particularly vulnerable to disease, insects, drought and to the fires that are being triggered by lightning and by an increasing number of people who live, work and recreate in forest environments. This is having a profound impact on fish and wildlife, the water we drink, the air we breathe, industries that operate in forest environments and on residents who live in forest communities. The 2016 Fort McMurray fire ended up being the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history. Only meaningful measures can prevent something like that tragedy from happening again. In this talk, Mr. Struzik will describe what government, industry, First Nations and forest communities can do to address the new wildfire paradigm that is emerging.