Up to 10% of homes could now be 'uninsurable' because of flood risk. Could yours be one?

Friday, November 26, 2021 – by John McHutchion

Here’s what you need to know to get the day started:

Up to 10% of homes could now be 'uninsurable' because of flood risk. Could yours be one?

Many homeowners are unprepared for flooding because they lack critical information thanks to murky real estate rules, incomplete floodplain maps and an insurance industry pulling back from high-risk areas, a Marketplace investigation has found.

Marketplace also found homeowners who lost their flood protection because of multiple claims or specifically because of the growing risk of climate change. The Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) warns it's a situation more Canadians could find themselves in.

The IBC told Marketplace it estimates that anywhere from six to 10 per cent of Canadian homes are currently uninsurable due to flooding and that estimate could go up as more insurance companies update their risk assessments to account for the rising threat of climate change.

"As the risk from climate change increases, yes, more Canadians could become uninsurable," said Craig Stewart, vice-president, federal affairs with the IBC.

According to a 2019 federal government report, Canada's climate is warming at double the rate of the rest of the world, and the IBC estimates that currently one in 10 Canadian homes are at high risk of flooding and some face possible repeated flooding over the next 20 years.

But would prospective homeowners be warned about that risk? Going undercover, posing as new homebuyers in Ontario, a Marketplace team found there's no Canada-wide requirement for agents or sellers to warn potential buyers that they're moving into a flood-prone area. Marketplace was told on two occasions that homes were not in floodplains when public data showed otherwise. In another test, a producer posing as a prospective home seller also found agents didn't always advise her to disclose past flood damage.

The recent flooding in British Columbia has made the issue of flood insurance coverage top of mind for many homeowners, as some residents there, unable to find coverage, turn to provincial disaster assistance, and others assess what coverage they have as the cleanup begins.

More on this issue

Read the full story here.

Watch: Murky real estate rules and insurance eligibility leaving Canadians with big bills after flooding.

Most dikes across southwest B.C. could fail under stress, report warned in 2015.

Canada Post unveils stamp celebrating literary luminary Margaret Atwood

(Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

Renowned Canadian writer Margaret Atwood poses next to a Canada Post special stamp unveiled in her honour in Toronto on Thursday. The stamp features a photo of Atwood resting her hand on her face, with her famous line "a word after a word after a word is power," from her poem Spelling, repeated in the background. Read more here about the honour for Atwood.

In brief

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will arrive in British Columbia today for his first visit since record-breaking rainfall caused widespread flooding and mudslides in the province — and just as more storms are forecast to hit this weekend. The prime minister will tour the city of Abbotsford in the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver, which has been particularly hit hard by the floods. Hundreds of residents in the region, many of them ranchers and farmers, are still out of their homes because of the extensive damage. Later on Friday, Trudeau will meet with Premier John Horgan and Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth and provide updates on federal aid for the disaster. Farnworth told a news conference on Thursday that residents in flood-prone areas of the province should be prepared for more evacuations as more storms roll in. The first of three storms in the forecast arrived on Thursday, with another expected early Saturday and the most intense and final storm to hit land on Tuesday. Read the full story here.

More than two million Canadian kids aged five to 11 are now eligible to get Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 pediatric vaccine — and with that comes an opportunity to get closer to reducing transmission of COVID-19 in the country. But what will the rollout of vaccines for this age group do for national vaccination rates? "Every additional person that gets vaccinated is a step in the right direction," said Dr. Tehseen Ladha, a pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Doctors and mathematicians say it's too soon to tell what the uptake in this age group will look like, as many immunization programs for kids started just days ago. Vaccination uptake in 12 to 17 year olds can be used as a proxy for how children and parents are thinking about vaccine, said Caroline Colijn, a mathematics professor at Simon Fraser University and the Canada 150 Research Chair in Mathematics for Evolution, Infection and Public Health. "Canada-wide, I think it's about 87 per cent of 12- to 17-year-olds had at least a first dose. So if we imagine that five to 11 [year olds] would be around that same number, then that does boost the overall Canadian vaccination rate to closer to 85 per cent,” she said. Read more on vaccinations for kids here.

Environmentalist David Suzuki has apologized for saying pipelines would be "blown up" if government leaders don't take action on climate change. Suzuki made the comments during an interview on Saturday, amid a protest in Victoria organized by the environmental group Extinction Rebellion. "We're in deep, deep doo-doo," Suzuki said at the time. "And the leading experts have been telling us for over 40 years. This is what we've come to. The next stage after this, there are going to be pipelines blown up if our leaders don't pay attention to what's going on." The environmentalist issued an apology through his foundation on Thursday, and said he had spoken out of extreme frustration. "The remarks I made were poorly chosen and I should not have said them," the statement said. "Any suggestion that violence is inevitable is wrong and will not lead us to a desperately needed solution to the climate crisis. My words were spoken out of extreme frustration and I apologize." Read more on Suzuki's apology here.

A woman with a long history of impersonation in other parts of Canada has been arrested and charged in Vancouver for allegedly posing as a nurse while working at B.C. Women's Hospital for a year. Brigitte Cleroux, 49, has been charged with fraud over $5,000 and personation with intent, according to a statement from the Vancouver Police Department (VPD). Investigators say Cleroux used the name of a real nurse to gain employment at the hospital, where she provided care to patients from June 2020 to June 2021. "We don't yet know how many people in Vancouver may have received treatment from the fraudulent nurse, but we're working with the Provincial Health Services Authority to identify patients who may have had contact with her," VPD Const. Tania Visintin said in the statement. CBC News has previously reported that Cleroux is suspected of administering sedatives and anesthetics to patients in Vancouver without being qualified to do so. Danette Thomsen, interim vice-president of the B.C. Nurses' Union, described the allegations as "absolutely alarming" and said she's never heard about something like this happening in the province. Read more on the woman who impersonated a nurse here.

There's an emerging notion of Canada as an impending superpower in mining the critical minerals that will run defining technologies of this century, from electric vehicles to smartphones and solar panels. It was a recurring theme of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's recent Washington visit. It's sometimes raised as a potential source of geopolitical power for Canada. We've even heard one attention-grabbing suggestion from union leader Jerry Dias: that Canada should cut the U.S. off from these minerals if it won't cave in a dispute over electric vehicles. This conjures improbable images of Canada wielding some sort of modern-day version of Saudi Arabia's notorious oil sword of the 1970s. But as CBC Washington correspondent Alexander Panetta writes, it's time for a reality check. Read his analysis here.

A NASA spacecraft is on its way to smash directly into an asteroid as part of a test to determine whether it's possible to redirect an asteroid headed toward Earth. Former International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield told CBC News Network's Power & Politics the mission is worth undertaking. "If we can just deflect an asteroid the tiniest bit, when it's millions of kilometres away, then it's going to miss the Earth," he said. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, launched on Tuesday. The spacecraft is expected to slam straight into the Dimorphos asteroid by September of next year. If the mission succeeds, Hadfield said, the world will have a method to stop a potentially catastrophic asteroid crash. Read more on the space mission here.

Now for some good news to start your Friday: Nelson Rego of Edmonton became visually impaired in 2001 and, though doctors don't know why, his eyesight continued to deteriorate until he was fully blind. As a lifelong fan of hockey, he had always wanted to play, which is why he decided to join a blind hockey team called Edmonton SeeHawks, which assigned him to play goal. He recently got to play net for Team Revolution Hockey Club, a team of sighted players. Rego said he won’t forget the experience, and even managed to make a glove save, although he wouldn't take credit for it. "I don't know how that got in there," he laughed, "but I made some decent saves." Read more about Rego here.

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COVID-19 vaccines for kids: what you need to know

Since the first pediatric Pfizer vaccines landed in Canada last weekend, provinces have been moving fast to get them into arms. Children got their first jabs in Ontario on Tuesday; more kids started being vaccinated in Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan on Wednesday; and the rollout continues to expand.

Today we're joined by Dr. Fatima Kakkar, an infectious diseases pediatrician at the research centre of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Sainte-Justine and an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Université de Montréal. She breaks down what's happening with these shots, how they work on kids and what to expect from the rollout.
Listen to today's episode

Today in history: November 26

1917: The National Hockey League is founded in Montreal with Frank Calder as president. The league's charter members include the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Arenas and the Quebec Bulldogs.

1949: India adopts a constitution that made it a republic within the British Commonwealth.

1986: Forty-two-year-old Ann Harrison of Toronto became the world's first double-lung transplant recipient.

2000: Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certifies George W. Bush as the winner in the state by a 537-vote margin over Democrat Al Gore. Gore vowed to fight the certification in court. Bush eventually became president after a favourable U.S. Supreme Court ruling.