Canadians remain vulnerable to flooding, concludes a report from the Office of the Auditor General of Canada. Incomplete maps, disparate data, federal delays, and a lack of common standards complicate risk management, posing a challenge to the insurance industry.
Several federal departments have failed in their task of gathering crucial information, concludes Canada’s Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Jerry V. DeMarco.
This is one of the findings of a 39-page report, which states that various federal departments “did not ensure the timely production of effective flood hazard maps…Many maps had not yet been completed, and most of the existing flood hazard information is not practical or actionable for users.”
The report indicates that Ottawa spent an average of $230 million annually on post-flood relief between 2016 and 2025. The 2025 budget included $25 billion in housing investments and $115 billion in infrastructure investments for the next five years.
These financial commitments underscore the need for evidence-based climate change information to adapt effectively and guide land-use planning and infrastructure development, states the report.
Delays, lack of clarity, and inconsistent verification were cited as contributing factors.
The auditor noted, in particular, that Public Safety Canada (PSC) did not publish its flood risk ratings by the end of 2025, as planned.
He also indicated that the Canada Flood Risk Finder platform, currently under development by the department, will not take climate change into account. Furthermore, since the system and data are owned exclusively by a private provider, updates will be virtually impossible.
In addition, Natural Resources Canada (NRC) was responsible for mapping some 200 higher-risk flood zones by 2028—a goal that the auditor believes will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. The report notes that the lack of performance indicators and the unclear definitions make it difficult to assess the program's results, adding that barely half of the priority areas identified in 2022 had been prioritized. Finally, the NRC, in conjunction with Environment and Climate Change Canada, was responsible for validating the compliance of flood zone mapping projects. However, this process was not carried out uniformly, the auditor found. Furthermore, the map inventory was incomplete, and some hyperlinks were broken.
“Canadians face escalating risks and higher disaster recovery costs in the absence of up-to-date information,” warns DeMarco.
Incomplete data
The Insurance Portal discussed the issue with Michael Bourdeau-Brien, associate professor in the Department of Finance, Insurance and Real Estate at Université Laval and holder of the AMF Fund for Integrated Risk Management in Financial Institutions.
“We’ve known for years that the maps are not up-to-date or that they are not all compiled in the same way,” he says. The main problem, according to him, is that traditional risk maps don't consider risks holistically. "A map is a fragment of information," observes Bourdeau-Brien.
"Historically, these maps only showed the frequency of hazards. New maps use a risk rating approach, which is already an additional element, but the mapping still omits several factors, such as the vulnerability of assets to damage," he added.
A governance challenge
Bernard Deschamps, who recently completed a doctorate with a dissertation on the role of municipalities in flood prevention, was also not surprised by the result.
“Currently, we’re working with maps produced by the provinces or by private providers that aren’t based on the same information or the same parameters,” Deschamps said in a telephone interview with Insurance Portal. “It’s disappointing because a lot of energy, effort, and money have been invested in public protection, and we end up with a bunch of maps that aren’t coordinated, that don’t communicate with each other…A map produced by one organization can’t be compared to another because they don’t use the same data or the same methodology,” he said. “So ultimately, we only get partial information.”
Deschamps added that according to the former president and CEO of the Mutuelle des municipalités du Québec (now the Fonds d'assurance des municipalités du Québec, or FQM Fund), the current situation stems from a governance problem.
He believes Ottawa’s role should have been to dictate the standards for map creation, as well as the data and types of risks that should be included, thus allowing for a degree of national standardization of mapping, and at a lower cost.
“The federal government should have acted as coordinator to determine mapping design standards so that each province would use the same methodology,” he said. “Currently, each province has its own approach, which means that a waterfront property in Ontario may not have the same risk rating as a house on the other side of the same waterway in Quebec.”
Are universities being ignored?
Another expert who is not surprised by the report's conclusions is Philippe Gachon, director of the Quebec Intersectoral Flood Network (RIISQ). Gachon is also a professor in the Department of Geography at the Université du Québec à Montreal (UQAM). He laments what he calls a "lack of coordination" between the federal government and the provinces, as well as between research centres and universities.
"Most of the scientific knowledge and tools developed to document and predict flood risk come from universities," he points out, citing UQAM's expertise in regional climate modelling as an example. "This expertise was not sufficiently utilized in the federal mapping process. No one from the federal government approached us to request our expertise…That doesn't mean no one contacted some of our members, but it wasn't done in a centralized way," the researcher clarifies. “[The Government of Canada] should have done it, not only to avoid duplication of effort, but also to ensure the complementarity of what was done.”
For Gachon, this siloed approach is symptomatic of the growing distance between the federal government and higher education over the past thirty years.
“During the (Jean) Chrétien government, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences was created to foster collaboration, train the next generation, and develop tools across all Canadian universities,” he recalls. “This foundation was dismantled under the (Stephen) Harper government and has never been reinstated.”
“Strategic error”
Deschamps believes that relying on a platform and data that remain the property of a private firm constitutes a “strategic error” on the part of the federal government.
“These firms sell their information to insurers to allow them to assess their risks in the face of all kinds of climate hazards,” he explains. “Since it’s a company that collected the data and developed its estimation models, it’s understandable that it doesn’t want to give away its formula [for free].”
Michael Bourdeau-Brien, for his part, welcomes the development of a risk culture, but points out that “insured individuals don’t have the capacity to access data from private providers…And, currently, what is made available by the government is neither accurate nor complete,” he said.
“Instead of using private firms, the government could have consulted us,” said Philippe Gachon. “It would have cost much less and would have supported research and the next generation of researchers.”
