Environment Committee on Feb. 10th, 2026

[Shannon Miedema, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Yes. I'm thinking about equity across the country, especially if some provinces and territories are more prone than others to various hazards.

I wonder if folks from Statistics Canada could comment.

What are you seeing in terms of trends with all of your data and analysis on areas of the country that are more highly impacted by this?

[Jennifer Withington]

We have seen various impacts and areas that are impacted. It depends on what elements you want to look at. For instance, we see insurance rates increasing. We do see that insurance rates are increasing in provinces that have had more extreme weather events. Manitoba and Alberta, I believe, have gone up quite a bit more than the other provinces. There's anecdotal evidence. Of course, there's some other evidence as well.

[Matthew Hoffarth, Assistant Director, National Economic Accounts Division, Statistics Canada]

I will just add that we have a lot of financial information about insurance. We do measure this by province and territory. We might not always have the granularity necessary to really home in on the issues. However, we do see these claim events in certain provinces. P.E.I. is a good example, with the hurricane where, for the claims ratio, you saw these claims far exceeding the premiums in that province. We do have this information by province.

[Shannon Miedema, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Even with regard to hurricane Juan in 2003 in Nova Scotia, I remember there being big conversations around insured and uninsured, and making the claims federally. It was this massive process for the insurance group at the city. The insurance part might be easier and better tracked.

How confident are you with your quantification of the uninsured losses of extreme weather events? Why or why not?

[Jennifer Withington]

We do capture assets in our balance sheet. When assets are destroyed, those would be taken out of our balance sheet. It is covered. As for the comprehensiveness of whether it's uninsured or insured, we don't make that distinction. We have a capital stock, and when there's an event, anything that's destroyed would be a decrease in value, be it insured or uninsured. We have both.

[Shannon Miedema, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

How would you quantify lost trade and business, like lost hours, lost days worked? Are you confident in that whole piece?

[Jennifer Withington]

When there are major extreme events, the LFS asks supplementary questions. For instance, with the Alberta wildfires, manufacturing, retail, wholesale.... They all ask their respondents for additional information. We do cover that, and we do have estimates on lost wages, as well as on wages gained—because you do have overtime for first responders. We do have both.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bonin, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for coming.

I have a question for you, Mr. Jacques. We often hear that a dollar invested in adaptation saves, more or less, $10 to $13. Do you have any studies or thoughts on a lack of investment in the fight against climate change? Would there be costs? Would it cost society more if we invested zero dollars, if we took no further action, for example?

[Jason Jacques]

I think that this is obvious now. As I said, we've published a number of reports on the economic impact of climate change in Canada. This impact is significant and it amounts to a few percentage points of GDP for the coming decades. Every Canadian will be affected.

That said, climate change shows the current situation and the need for mitigation, such as reinvestment in assets after a disaster. We need to rebuild in a way that better prepares infrastructure and assets for the current climate.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Can you send us these predictions, the different scenarios for the impact on GDP?

[Jason Jacques]

Yes. Absolutely. We published this report three or four years ago now. I'll be happy to send it to you.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Okay.

I would now like to turn to the Statistics Canada officials.

Ms. Withington, you said that all these calculations are indeed complex. However, is it possible to carry out a study that somewhat covers all the climate change‑related costs for households, businesses and governments?

[Jennifer Withington]

Yes. It's possible to collect all this data.

For the moment, the UN is working on a statistical framework that will be used by all statistical agencies to put together the estimates for these types of events in a comprehensive way.

One challenge that we face is timing and being able to parse out the exact causes. For instance, some things, like the loss of wages because a business closed, you'll see immediately. Other things, such as payouts from insurance, might take a year or sometimes even two years to show through the economic system.

That said, it isn't impossible, but it does pose challenges.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Okay. Can you provide a brief summary of what you have?

[Jennifer Withington]

Yes. Certainly.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Okay. Great.

[Ryan MacDonald, Director, Economic and Social Analysis and Modelling Division, Statistics Canada]

I could add something.

To measure things very specifically for these events, we have to be able to measure things at the community level for a town, for a neighbourhood, for the outskirts of Halifax when they start having forest fire evacuations and for the Sumas Prairie when it's flooding in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. That system is one we've been working on as a research project in the background. You'll see a number of studies that Statistics Canada has started providing on what the economic impact is.

The thing with these impacts is that because they're so local, we really have to get down to these smaller areas. In order to do that, we need fairly complete data systems, and they take time to compile. Surveys are really good for having really up-to-date information, but because of the sampling frameworks and things, they don't always get down into the real nitty-gritty of the details and we'll have to wait, sometimes up to two years, for much more complete data to show up.

Yes, we're going down that route. We are starting to provide this information, but it comes with this lag.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Do we have an order of magnitude for the percentage of inflation or the consumer price index stemming from climate change?

[Matthew Hoffarth]

I don't have that number specifically, but when we look at catastrophic claims—again, the definition for that is $30 million or more from a given event—we do see that those are contributing to some of the increases we're seeing in our insurance costs. Again, it's not the bulk of it; in about one in five dollars, you can see that impact from these catastrophic claims.

[Jennifer Withington]

As well, when we talk about GDP, one thing to caution is that GDP is not a measure of welfare or well-being, because the economic activity with rebuilding actually contributes to GDP. We have to remember that it is just an economic activity measure. In that sense, there are some costs, but there are also some ways in which it contributes to GDP.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Jacques, the government has been announcing a national flood insurance program for some time now. Have you looked at the cost, the benefits and the beneficiaries?

[Jason Jacques]

Unfortunately, we haven't looked into this issue.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I'm not saying this to point the finger at my colleagues. However, they often talk about industrial carbon pricing and they say that it's costly for households. Obviously, my colleagues want us to do less to fight climate change. We, in the Bloc Québécois, say that there is a cost. Have you calculated the cost of industrial carbon pricing for individuals? How much would it cost?

[Jason Jacques]

Yes. We've done this type of analysis, and—