This transcript was generated using automated transcription. While efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, some errors or inaccuracies may remain.

Helen Chambers:

Welcome everybody to today’s webinar, strengthening wildfire resilience. This webinar is going to explore how not one, not two, but three of our ICMIF members, Co-operators, Gore Mutual, and Wawanesa, are addressing Canada’s wildfire vulnerabilities and the complexities of providing affordable insurance, particularly for homes in high-hazard wildfire areas. We will hear individually from each member and then we’ll ensure that there will be time for questions at the end. So try and hold your questions, write them down. I know you’ll be dying to ask them. And then at the end, if you want to speak, you can put your hand up, otherwise we’ll pop them in the chat.

Okay, so I’d firstly like to introduce you to Michelle Laidlaw from Co-operators who will share their experience pioneering wildfire risk assessment in the Canadian insurance sector and developing national risk model as well as adaptation strategies for Canadian communities.

Over to you, Michelle.

Michelle Laidlaw:

Thanks so much, Helen. Thank you for inviting us, first of all, and for inviting myself. So as Helen said, I’m Michelle Laidlaw. I’m the AVP of our National Home Product Portfolio area at Co-operators, and I have accountability for profitability and growth and the product development, and I’m also our resiliency and sustainability lead for product development and claims implementation. So pretty busy and that’s why I’m here to talk to you today because wildfire risk is a pretty sizable challenge obviously in the Canadian market. And I’m going to share some of our response, some of the work we’ve done, and some of the lessons that we learned through the years on our wildfire work.

So I’m sure many of my peers will have seen something like this, but I just wanted to share specifically in the Canadian model, the obvious wildfire exposure. Canada’s a huge geographic area, a very diverse geographic area and has significant wildfire exposure across the country.

Very notably, obviously, Western Canada and northern parts of Canada are very, very heavily exposed to wildfire. And we’re very, very impacted by climate change, we’re starting to see that roll up from the south and starting to see worse years, worse wildfire, and years where we talk about wildfire a lot more frequently than we have in the past. And with that rising frequency and severity of fire, we have some estimates in the Canadian market that about five billion is needed every year to ensure we’re adapting critical infrastructure to protect Canadian communities. And what we currently have available today is about 280 million in the space to make sure that we are adapting Canadian communities to the current risk we’re exposed to. And the reality is that obviously the math is not mathing. The math is not appropriate. And we’re left with a pretty sizable crisis where the risks continue to increase and all of a sudden as insurance professionals, we know if the risk increases, the premiums increase.

And that drives a lack of affordability, lack of availability in some of our highest risk and most vulnerable communities in Canada, which is it’s a significant problem. So we had a challenge ahead of us a number of years ago, and we did a very sizable shift in our organisation to say we need to move beyond indemnity to a model of resilience. So we need to find ways to invest in both prevention and recovery. If we continue to do what we’re doing, what we were going to do is continue the trend on unaffordability and unavailability of insurance offerings. And again, in our most vulnerable populations in Canada, which as a cooperative, we obviously felt we needed to act boldly, we needed to act swiftly, and we needed to move with intention. So we did a number of things to move beyond, like I said, beyond indemnity to building resilience and investing in communities differently.

So the first step and why we’re here today was really to understand what are the risks? What is wildfire risk in Canada? And we went on this journey a number of years ago and we pioneered a wildfire risk assessment model, and we were the first in the Canadian insurance sector to build this. We did build a national risk model that used detailed weather, detailed fuel information, geographic data, and we really wanted to simulate how wildfires ignite and spread. And we ran a number of scenarios across our portfolio to understand how could wildfire be impacted. And this was all intended to ensure we understood where the highest risk was and how that risk was changing. So we built a team, so they’re our charm teams, so they’re climactic hazard and risk modelling team.

And we may be biassed, they are best in class in climate risk modelling in Canada. And we work very consistently with government and different NGOs asking us to inform on policy and to share our expertise in this space. And we are pretty proud of this work and this is work that we do, again, to really understand climate risk and ensure that we can build solutions to build adaptation strategy and prevention strategies, which is the ultimate outcome that we’re trying to achieve. This adventure obviously has been a work in progress and has been many years in play and we wanted to share a few of our key learnings from this work. The first thing I’ll say is this is not easy and this requires boldness, it requires innovation, and it requires commitment because wildfire in Canada and across the world is incredibly complex. It is changing every year.

We see different patterns and it’s not easy. This is not simple work and it requires a significant commitment. So we had obviously significant commitment at our leadership table to invest in understanding wildfire risk assessment. And again, what I’ll say is with the ultimate goal of building out prevention and adaptation strategy. So our north star was to build out adaptation. The north star is not just understanding the risk, it’s ensuring that we could address those risks in a proactive manner. As we were building the model, some of the key learnings, so the risk is multifactor. There’s the interplay of the environment, the region, vegetation, climate, fire history. There’s not one single factor, tangible factor that you can outline to say how a wildfire is going to start and how it’s going to propagate across the land. You also can’t ignore the more intangible variables. So things like what was the firefighting response in a past event?

If you look at years where maybe there were multiple wildfires and fire resources were spread very thin or there was incredibly intense wildfire, we had to apply a number of resources, that all comes into play in some of your historic data. And to be frank, there isn’t a lot of historical data that is helpful. So you can’t ignore it and you have to rely on expertise in the field. And I’ll share a little bit about some of our partnerships that really helped to drive some of those conversations. Further, we expected this from the start, but geography is a granular item. You can see different risk exposure from one street to street to street and it will look different. And so you need to get very, very, very succinct and very crisp on your modelling. It can’t be a granular 30,000-foot level, you have to get on the ground level to do this type of modelling.

We also had to do a lot of validation. So we all know when we build a model, it’s based on data, it’s based on assumptions, and we’ve compared that against some historic fires and major Canadian wildfires to see did the model actually predict what we actually experienced? And so we did a past look as well. And we did find as well that in some of those cases the modelling was accurate and obviously in some it wasn’t. So we used a test and learn approach to make sure we were appropriately identifying where the risk was the greatest. We also found that a few large events can really drive the most loss. For those of you in Canada, you’ll remember certain big ones like Fort McMurray, the Jasper wildfires. Those tend to be very impactful. So you really have to understand that while we also have these really large scale events, there is a frequency aspect as well that needs to be considered.

So looking at both of those and as we see more and more in Canada especially, what we’re starting to see is more and more communities that drive into the wildland-urban interface. And we’re building in those areas, which some of us on this call I’m sure have very strong opinions about as do I, but that’s our reality. And so we have to address the fact that it may not be always a severity issue, but could be a frequency issue as we build closer and closer to the wildland-urban interface. And lastly, I’ll say landscape context matters.

An isolated pocket of trees is not the same risk as a property inside a large interconnected wildfire prone landscape. And so when you’re looking again at the 30,000-foot level, you see trees. When you get down to the granular level, it’s understanding what are those trees? How do those trees interact with the rest of the wildland-urban interface or the rest of the community? It’s a critical importance to address in that situation. I guess some of the advice, some of the learning that we had through this entire process was we had to test and learn and we had to be willing to fail and willing to learn and grow as we went. We started off with a very small proof of concept. We built a small model that addressed a few communities and took that as an opportunity to build and to learn and to adjust.

So by taking an agile process, you’re able to keep learning and to keep growing. The other piece we learned is that, and I’ve said this again in previous statements, Canada’s a very large country and the geography is incredibly diverse. And I’ll add that wildfire is incredibly complex. So even today, I was actually talking with one of my peers this week on, we continue to need to evolve this model. And so it is work that requires, again, commitment, not just from a time, but from a financial perspective to ensure that you’re continuing to evolve the model as it adjusts… Oh, sorry, I have a bit of an echo. As it adjusts and as climate change continues to impact weather patterns. So this type of work requires significant commitment over the long term. It’s not something you can do in the short term and then just set on a shelf and forget.

And so kind of an outstanding question, do we believe that this could be adopted with other insurers? And our answer is yes. The approaches that we used is based on broadly accepted principles of wildfire science, risk assessment, and spatial analysis. And it makes it applicable beyond a single insurer or geographic region. Makes it largely, I would say it should be available to all insurers.

Like I said before, it’s definitely not easy. It’s very complex and requires a diverse skillset and a lot of time and commitment, but highly rewarding. And so again, we did all of this to address stage one, which is the plan and prevent stage for us, which is how do we understand where there’s wildfire risk in Canada that we can address? What could we do differently? And how could we then move along those three stages of resilience for plan and prevent, absorb, and recover?

So the most exciting part for me is what we did with the data that we found from our wildfire modelling and to be frank, from other modelling work we’ve done. And what that looked like for us is really turning that modelling work into action. So a couple of key items that we have worked on. So we built out our TomorrowStrong coverage, which it is a build back better coverage offering. So it is very impactful in wildfire zones because what this coverage enables us to do is to build back a client in a more resilient posture post-loss. And this is actually an embedded coverage in our coverage offering. This is something we do as part of our claims practises. And so we will intentionally do that and have those conversations with individuals in high risk areas, especially where we know that if they’re subjected to wildfire one time, they’re living in wildfire communities.

So they likely are going to need to prevent in the future. We also stood up last year our Resilience Acceleration Lab. So this is a lab that a team of individuals within the Co-operators that are looking at ways to unlock private capital to finance community adaptation projects across the country. So they just put out a bid for different municipalities to work alongside our teams to identify tactics for building out different wildfire strategies and to protect their communities more effectively. Our impact investing, again, we are industry leading in our impact investing. And again, it has enabled us to be real leaders in this space. And the last one, which I think is really important, they’re all important, but what’s critically important and really important in the building of your model is looking for partnerships. We’ve been working with FireSmart, ICLEI Canada and the Canadian Climate Institute to name a few and across government and we continue to do this.

And our modelling teams do this as well and within our fire modelling group. And these partnerships not only allow us to impact positively, but they also bring expertise into our organisation that we maybe don’t have. Because again, these issues are complex and if we’re not relying on partnerships, we are possibly missing expertise that’s out in industry and other areas so we can impact more globally and at a higher scale. So to close, one of the things that we say pretty consistently is we can’t ensure our way out of this. We can’t ensure our way out of climate risk. If we try to, we’re just going to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And that is not a viable solution. So we really need to consider how can we take a whole of society approach to this problem, bringing forward government, private capital developers, insurers all working together to adapt communities and make sure we’re building back better.

And we say this again, and I’m sure some of you do as well, the most expensive home in Canada is the one that we have to build twice. So it’s important for us to adapt Canadian homes to the risk that they’re exposed to at this time. And thanks everyone and I will pass it back to Helen. Thanks so much.

Helen Chambers:

Thank you. Thanks so much, Michelle. I really enjoyed that. I particularly like the sound of your charm team. I think I’d like to be in the charm team. Sounds really nice.

Michelle Laidlaw:

Everybody wants to be part of the charm team.

Helen Chambers:

Next, we’re going to hear from Gabby from Gore Mutual who provide insights into their efforts to help protect members’ properties from wildfires and also share the current work that they’re doing on the impact of vulnerable communities. So Gabby, if you’re ready and able, can I hand over to you?

Gaby Polanco-Sorto

Thanks, Helen, and Michelle, great presentation. We always really appreciate, I think, the partnership and the leadership that Co-operators has in the industry and thrilled that you were able to share your presentation today.

So for my presentation, I’m going to talk a little bit more about community and people and the impact that that has in terms of wildfires here in Canada and some of the work that Gore Mutual does in partnership with other mutuals and cooperatives and through the various associations that we have here in Canada. But just really quickly about Gore Mutual, we are the oldest general insurance company in Canada. We were funded in 1839, so a long time ago. And as a mutual, we have our roots really based on community and purpose. And so a lot of the work that we’ve been doing around resilience has been really focused in all levels of product development, who we are as an organisation and the work that we do with community and partnership.

I wanted to give a little bit more context and add to what Michelle shared about the Canadian context for wildfire impact. As we were saying, wildfire has become much more severe and more frequent year over year in Canada. Jasper is definitely one of those big more recent examples where it destroyed a third of the town. And we’re still talking about Jasper because the recovery period has also taken much longer I think than many anticipated. But in terms of this disaster recovery, one of the things that we are also finding as an industry in Canada is that the recovery periods are taking longer, not only because the challenges around trade and access to certain materials to rebuild, but it’s actually the frequency in which disasters are happening. And so it’s very difficult to actually keep up and we can’t close necessarily one recovery period without having to start the next one.

And so one of the stats that to me blows my mind, which is from 2025, we had about $8 billion worth of insured losses in Canada that happened within a span of five weeks. So we had wildfires in the West as well as in the Atlantic coast. We had flooding in Southern Ontario. We had hailstorms in Alberta. And so you can imagine all the claims teams in the industry were going through quite a considerable amount of having not only the consistency of the claims coming in, but the communities that we’re needing to help recover. The other thing that you’ll notice, and I have a map in a following slide that actually shows you visually everything that Michelle said about the landscape of Canada right now in terms of wildfire is that we’re seeing the impact now on communities across the board. And this is socioeconomically health access to housing.

And a lot of that actually is mitigated by various just socioeconomic factors that we’re facing here in Canada. And one of the challenges that I appreciate that our international colleagues are often surprised, but Canada, we also have governments that work on four-year cycles. And so on an election year, you won’t get anything done. And you’ll be seeing a lot of the changes and announcements in the Canadian government recently about things related to sustainability, green economy, et cetera, and the feeling that we’re going back into oil and gas and a lot of the announcements around infrastructure are focused on that. And so there is constantly a challenge of us working with government, trying to really get to the forefront. Insurance companies hold a lot of data as many of you know, and we are the ones that are able to interpret that and give them some long-term warnings of what is going to happen.

The California fires recently was a big testament to some of the things that we’ve been trying to talk to the Canadian government about. Those that are interested, Insurance Bureau of Canada did do a report I think about a year and a half ago on the biggest learnings that the Canadian landscape had from the California fires. And so we continue to partner with other organisations like Wawanesa and Co-operators as we try to talk to government about the things that we feel need to be put in place and some of the regulation and building codes that should be put at the forefront to mitigate some of the risks that we’re seeing. So this map is from this morning. This is the Canadian wildfire map. And so I thought it was great, Michelle, that you shared the dynamics of the Canadian context and visually I thought it was even more fascinating.

So I wanted to share this with everyone. A couple of things. The shaded areas really talk about the expected weather that’s coming and how that’s raising the risk in areas of Canada. It’s pretty much all of Canada could be in underfire warning relatively soon and we’re going into another heat period over the next week or so. And then the little dots are actual live wildfires right now. What is fascinating to me is that the red dots are wildfires that are out of control that are not being monitored and the purple are the uncontrolled wildfires that are being monitored. That is a considerable amount of the north of Canada. And these are things that we haven’t necessarily seen in the past so far north to the point that this week there has been a health advisory for air quality in places like Yellowknife and other areas of the north in Canada where we haven’t seen that before.

Usually it was the sub areas around the US border like Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, but you’re seeing these dynamics kind of change. A lot of this has to do with the lack of precipitation that we’re having. As you can see the lower side of British Columbia, we had low precipitation, sorry, and very little snow over the last winter. And so it expected that this is going to be quite a rough one for the BC and the interior. But all in all, these are the types of things that we’re starting to monitor. And so when we think about some of these, a lot of the wildfires are not necessarily close to heavily populated areas, but the impact that that is having on livelihood and health across Canada is something that has been much more top of mind over the last, I don’t know, five years I would say, where we’re actually seeing deaths due to heat and the increased vulnerability to people that already have long-term health issues and that being precipitated by air quality as well as heat.

So this chart comes from Signal49 Research, and this is where it kind of delves into some of the work that we’ve been doing at Gore Mutual, specifically looking at the implications that natural disasters, but including flooding and wildfire actually has on various different assets within aspects of the society. And so you have the built environment on the left side and the impact that that has on our infrastructure and transportation and energy. And on the right-hand side is the impact that it’s having on our natural environment, specifically around biodiversity and ecosystems. And when we think about recovery, one of the things that has been so interesting to me over the last couple years is that we’re noticing that when wildfires hit and when it’s time to be able to restore some of those geographic areas, we actually can’t plant the same trees that were there before the wildfire.

Those trees actually are no longer surviving because of the temperature changes. And so it’s changing the dynamic in terms of what you can plant going north. And so that for us is really interesting because that’s changing the dynamic of how we need to understand the changing climate and the types of the biodiversity and ecosystems, how they’re going to change and what we actually need to invest in order to preserve those areas. But it’s going to have to be different. It can’t be the same as what we’ve had in the past. You can also see underneath that both the economic and the social aspects of this. And one of the things that we don’t often think about, and it’s actually interesting because we do a lot of work with Co-operators that we’ve learned a lot on the agriculture side as well, that people are not only losing their homes, they’re losing their livelihood because oftentimes whether it’s the factory they work at or the land that they were planting on or the companies that they were working for aren’t able to reopen.

There’s actually a big economic factor that is underlying then areas within the social sector that are quite challenging right now in terms of preparedness and recovery. And when you think about what levels of government we need to work with here in Canada, you have the federal government, but there’s also the provincial governments and they’re responsible for certain things that the federal one isn’t. And then you have the municipalities, which are many dealing with a considerable amount of issues, but also having the weight of having to do a lot of this preparedness. And so we are having to deal with all levels of government and ensuring that there’s connectivity in terms of the topics and the preparedness and the information that we’re able to share with them and then ultimately being able to prepare communities. What to me is interesting is the contextual factors that you have on the right-hand side, because there are already existing vulnerabilities within any society and many of you are within countries that also face different issues at that level.

And one of the things that we think about is that during COVID, it really reinforced some of those inequalities and those underlying factors when you think about, at least in Canada, they would map out where the biggest hotspots related to COVID and a lot of them were within areas of vulnerable community where you had necessarily affordable or government-related housing. And we’re seeing the same thing happen now from a heat perspective and a wildfire perspective because a lot of the people that are living within those communities, those neighbourhoods have less access to green infrastructure, less access to houses that are built for that new temperature or retrofitting that’s happening is missing those communities and areas. And so one of the things that we’ve been looking at is how do we prepare communities for that?

And one of the examples that I’ll give is that in Vancouver in 2021, 600 people died of heat. And I remember I did this presentation for ICMIF in Belo Horizonte in 2023 and there was actually a gasp in the audience because people assume that in Canada, those people don’t die of heat. But the majority of those 600 people that died of heat were seniors that were living alone. And so that has now reinforced some of the work that we’ve been doing around not only investing in infrastructure and preparedness, but actually what we’re calling social infrastructure, which how do you allow communities to build their own relationships and look at emergency preparedness at a very, very local level? Because like Michelle mentioned, things are very different at a community level. They can even be different at a street level. And so understanding those risks at a very local level and how to both mitigate that, but be prepared for an emergency requires that type of community preparedness and community network that doesn’t necessarily exist, especially in larger cities in Canada.

And so that’s where the Climate and Equity Lab came in, which is our premier, I think, programme out of the Gore Mutual Foundation. We actually launched it in Belo Horizonte at the ICMIF Conference in 2023. And it was a partnership between ourselves, Innovation Canada and York University’s Faculty of Environment and Urban Change. And what we were trying to do was create a hub from an academic, a social innovation, and an industry perspective to really understand the impact of climate on vulnerable populations in Canada. The areas of focus were primarily in British Columbia and Ontario. But as you can imagine in British Columbia, our biggest area of focus was heat and wildfire. And how we approach that work was really important.

We went really to the local level to get a better understanding of how climate was impacting those communities. But even in addition to that, during the Colona fires a couple of years ago, instead of donating to the Red Cross, we actually gave a budget to our claims team that was on the ground and they were actually responsible for meeting with community members, understanding their needs, and actually buying things for those community members that understood what their needs are instead of giving it to a big national NGO.

What ended up happening was that in the shoe swap region, the indigenous community was so appreciative of our approach that we were one of the first insurers that was allowed onto indigenous lands to look at the fire risk and the claims. And again, it was one of those things of understanding and appreciating that person-to-person connection and understanding the community needs that became really important. From the learnings that we had at the community level, this is where we actually identified what are some of the bigger solutions that we can be a part of. And I’m really proud that at the Buenos Aires ICMIF conference in 2024, I feel like this programme has always been tied to ICMIF in some way, but in Buenos Aires in 2024, we announced that the Co-operators was actually joining us as part of the Climate and Equity Lab, as well as the Peter Gilgan Foundation, which is a private foundation here in Canada.

But it reinforced the aspect of the approach that mutuals and co-ops can take in terms of doing some of this work, being open source, being available for others to learn and leverage was a really grounding factor in terms of how we came together to take this programme and this initiative to the next level. But in the interest of time, there’s a lot of publications that we’ve done, again, from an open source perspective for anyone to learn about the different phases of the lab. But what I found really interesting was that as part of all the work with the lab, we did find what we’re calling five levers of change from the community-level grassroots initiatives all the way to policy and systemic change, what are the things that as insurers we can actually do? With our partners, we decided we would focus on the lower two, which really was around housing innovation, specifically around low-income households, how do we prepare them for natural disasters, how to mitigate some of the risks related to wildfires?

But then the local community-led response for climate emergencies has been really critical for us. And so especially in the lower mainland of British Columbia, as I was saying, when you saw that map and all that red, that is a heavily populated area where we’ve been really investing in some of the pilots and initiatives that we’re hoping to scale and working very closely with municipalities around them understanding how to leverage some of those community-led and owned initiatives to ensure that we’re protecting the people that are most vulnerable. What I do find fascinating though are the top three, and this is where going back to Michelle’s last slide where we are really leveraging a lot of our partnerships, associations and engagement with levels of government because things like access to affordable insurance and insurance is getting more expensive and it is becoming quite challenging. If you saw that map, there are going to be areas in Canada in the future, whether it’s from flood risk or wildfire risk, that if we actually do price the risk, is going to become unaffordable for many Canadians.

And so that is an aspect that is not going to be solved by any one insurer. And so we agreed that we are going to continue to engage through the different associations and engagements with governments together as an industry to help ensure that that continues to be top of mind. The municipalities are playing a much bigger role in Canada specifically, but with much little less resources than some of their other government affiliates. And so we’re working with them in terms of really understanding climate change, really understanding some of the perils that we’ve been talking about and how to really help to advocate and create change for that. So the next couple of years I think are going to be fascinating, especially with the direction in which the Canadian government is going right now around the economy. I think as was mentioned before, many of us have talked about where Canada’s deciding to build new homes.

I think as an industry, we’re a bit disappointed. I’ll speak at a high level, a bit disappointed in terms of the engagements of being able to really think about the areas within Canada where we are building that are really of high risk and we are going to have to rebuild, whether it’s from flood, from hail, from wildfires. We really do want to protect communities and so building in the right places will be quite important. So I do think that the next five years for Canada are going to be quite critical in seeing what we can do to mitigate some of this risk and really prepare our communities for it. So with that, I’ll pass it back to you, Helen.

Helen Chambers:

Thank you, Gabby. That was really insightful. I think a big eye-opener for me was seeing that map. I don’t think I’ve seen anything. It really brings home the scale and so interesting about having to plant different trees. You can’t plant back the same trees. Yeah, I find that really fascinating. So thank you for sharing.

So our final speaker today is going to be Mitch from Wawanesa who will explain Wawanesa’s approach to building partnerships to help protect communities as well as touching on their new digital tool that provides Canadians mainly with, I think, with personalised ID-driven insights to better understand their exposure and take action to reduce that exposure. So Mitch, hopefully you are there and able to share your slides with everybody.

Mitch McEwen:

Hi, everyone, and thank you to ICMIF for the opportunity to be here today. And it’s also great to be discussing this important issue with Canadian peers like Co-operators and Gore. I have the pleasure of leading Sustainability, Climate Resilience & Community Impact at Wawanesa based out of Montreal. And today I’m going to share how we’re approaching wildfire resilience in Canada, why wildfire is becoming one of the more important climate risks for insurers, and how mutuals are uniquely positioned to help members and communities become more resilient before losses occur. And the message is quite simple. Climate resiliency is becoming a core value proposition and wildfire is just one example of why that shift matters now.

Of course, it’s no secret that weather-related insured losses continue to rise in Canada and wildfire is clearly one of the examples on why this landscape is drastically changing. Wildfire is challenging because of course it’s no longer limited to just remote forest areas. We’re talking about the urban wild interface and it increasingly affects communities, infrastructure, air quality, evacuation planning and insurance availability. All things, of course, Michelle and Gabby just touched upon. It’s also highly variable. Risk can shift quickly based off of weather, vegetation, land use, building materials, and the degree of preparedness at the property and the community level. For insurers, this means that climate risk of course is becoming more location specific, prevention-focused, and dependent on partnerships beyond just the insurance sector alone and really highlights the need for a whole society approach, which I think is again, the themes that we’ve been discussing here today.

Regulators, members, and communities increasingly expect insurers to be part of this solution, and therefore climate resilience is becoming integral to risk management, member value, and long-term business performance, particularly for insurers. So why do insurers need to evolve? Well, because risk is becoming more visible and property specific, but visibility alone is just not enough. Wildfire really illustrates this because two properties in the same region could have very different risk profiles depending on the vegetation, the defensible space, the roof materials, access routes, local firefighting capacity and community preparedness. I think I’ll provide a few examples later in the presentation from last year, wildfires in Central and Western Canada.

But members increasingly want practical guidance, not just coverage because many of the highest impact actions happen before loss occurs. And this really creates an opportunity for insurers and brokers to act as resiliency advisors by helping people understand the risk, identify the priority actions to reduce that risk and make better informed decisions in the long term. Better wildfire resilience conversations can also strengthen trust while reducing losses. And they really help reposition insurance as a partner in prevention rather than only a mechanism for recovery. So what was Wawanesa doing it at this? Our approach can be summarised really into three pillars as outlined in our recent integrated report that we like to call our report to our members. Protect means managing today’s risk and supporting members when events occur. Strengthen in this context is also about reducing the losses before they happen by encouraging practical mitigation at all different levels, both at the property and community level.

And enable recognises that resiliency requires collaboration amongst insurers, governments, communities, researchers, and individuals. The broader point is that no single organisation can solve wildfire risk alone, let alone other climate perils as climate risks becomes more climate certainties. The insurance sector has an important role, but impact depends on coordinated action. Ultimately, our goal is to help keep insurance available and affordable by supporting risk reduction before disaster strikes. We’re making proactive investments through Wawanesa Climate Champions Programme where we invest over $2 million annually to support resiliency across Canada. These investments support environmental stewardship, disaster preparedness, wildfire prevention, and youth engagement. The strategic intent here is to address underlying drivers of risk, not just after an event.

In the wildfire context, that means supporting work that helps communities reduce fuel loads, improve preparedness, understand local risk, and build capacity to act before fire conditions become an emergency. By investing in community capacity prevention and education, you can really help build the conditions that make resiliency possible over the long term, which again is a unique value proposition of mutual insurers.

So one example is with FireSmart Canada. Over the past three years, we’ve supported wildfire prevention initiatives in communities across Canada. This focus is not just on infrastructure, it’s about building a culture of prevention and preparedness. That really matters because wildfire risk is shaped by many small decisions made before an emergency. Again, defensible space, vegetation management, building materials, emergency planning, and community coordination. I sound like a broken record about those points, but it’s really important because those are ultimately some of the annual fuel drivers that beyond traditional infrastructure can help really reduce the severity of losses before they happen. And prevention is most effective when those actions become normal, practical and supported locally. On the other point, I’m going to talk about the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. Education really remains a critical component of wildfire resiliency because people need to know how to act and why.

We support the ICLR Centre in Winnipeg as a place where insurers, builders and municipalities and communities can learn, collaborate, and share best practises. Moving from awareness to action of course requires trusted information, credible messages and strong partnerships. Wildfire specifically, that means translating technical risk into practical steps that people can actually complete at the property and broader community level. And in terms of response during disasters, despite prevention efforts as Gabby’s map, I’m going to label it Gabby’s map, but Gabby’s not illustrates major wildfires will still occur and response capacity remains critical. During the 2025 wildfire season in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, wildlife supported impacted members through our claim services, emergency assistance, mobile response unit, partnerships with organisations like the Canadian Red Cross. Wildfire events create complexity recovery needs because they involve total loss claims typically. Evacuation, smoke damages, business interruption, and deep community disruption. Jasper being a prime example of that over the past few years.

In these moments, resilience really becomes deeply personal. The experience also reinforces why pre-event preparedness matters. The stronger the household, the community and the response ecosystem before disaster occurs, the better position people are to recover afterwards. And this leads to one of our more recent announcements that we’ve made on how we’re trying to drive risk to resilience. We’re piloting a first of its kind AI-powered tool with a Canadian startup called Climative. The goal is to transform complex risk and property information into simple actionable recommendations. This is specifically important for wildfire because the risk can feel overwhelming unless it’s translated into prioritised steps people can actually take. We want members to understand what actions matter most, where to start, and how to make their homes feel safer and more resilient. What’s also quite interesting about this tool is it pairs energy efficiency of energy retrofits alongside resiliency measures to create a different payback period because we know the payout profile of resiliency projects are typically asymmetric and only happen when an event occurs.

The opportunity here is really, of course, to move from risk awareness to driving behavioural change and from behavioural change to measurable loss production over time. And if I have to leave you with one thought today, the future of insurance is not simply about recovering from disasters, it’s about helping people become more resilient before disasters occur. Wildfire makes that responsibility tangible because decisions made before a fire season by households, communities, governments, insurers can materially influence the outcomes for those communities and individual. For mutual insurers, resilience aligns naturally with our purpose, of course. Stronger, better prepared communities create stronger organisations and a more sustainable insurance system in the long run. With that, Helen, I’ll pass it back over to you. I think we’ll turn it over to questions.

Helen Chambers:

Thank you so much, Mitch. Really, really interesting and insightful information there. I really like your statement on the fact that nobody can tackle this alone. We are all supporting each other and all in it together. So we do still have time for questions amazingly. So after all that insight and information that you’ve already have, then there is time if you wanted to ask any questions. I see we’ve already got a handle. And while we wait for those, I’ll ask a question of my own. If you could recommend one practical action for insurers beginning the wildlife resilience journey, what would that be?

Mitch McEwen:

I’ll talk maybe a little bit more philosophically, Helen, first. I think this is not going to be a surprise for many people in the room. I think there’s challenges with perception around insurance and the insured. So how do you change that relationship from very transactional? There’s very specific points in time in which you interact with your insurer when you’re binding the policy, when you have a claim. Those are the moments of truth. With climate risk, that really changes the dynamic. What we’re talking about here is different flavours of engagement before loss occurs. So how do we fundamentally flip that dynamic around to change it to more a relationship-based model rather than transactional base is kind of the philosophical answer. And I think just as a practical example, that’s why we’re launching tools like our partnership with Climative to help inform people. We’re learning a lot from that as well.

So it’s going to be a journey because the insurance industry’s been around for quite some time, but climate risk is fundamentally challenging those fundamentals.

Gabby Polanco-Sorto:

Maybe I’ll add to that in terms of just access to data. I think data is incredibly important. And one of the challenges that we have had in Canada is that we don’t necessarily have great peril data across all of our perils, across all the geographies. Part of it is because of where the majority of the population live in Canada, there hasn’t been some great data mapping for some of the northern areas or based on certain perils. And so I think having a good understanding of what data exists, many times government entities or statistical organisations have that data and then how you can leverage that because it is still one of the biggest challenges that we talk about in the industry is just access to the mapping data, especially around wildfire and flooding.

Michelle Laidlaw:

I’ll add on a very similar vein, but find partners and find… And we all stress that in our content. There is so much knowledge and expertise and information in other industry sectors. And as an industry, we tend to be close the loop. We’re very within our own purview. But the reality is this issue is so complex and you can’t ever hire enough or bring in enough expertise into your organisation to be able to fill all the gaps. And so where we’ve seen success and my peers on the call have said the same thing where we’ve seen success where we go out and find partners in this space within our industry and outside of our industry to work collectively. So to say that would be the one starting point is find those partnerships and start building those relationships and understanding the complexities as you advance.

Helen Chambers:

Thanks, guys. And it looks like we’ve got a question from the panel.

Maja Dos Santos:

I have a question and it’s really not about any individual things that are happening within the industry or your company. It is more about as an industry, are we seeing the progress we need to see on resiliency strategies and are they being funded properly from the government? And how can we as an industry influence that differently? So three questions really.

Michelle Laidlaw:

I can start on my thoughts on this one because I had it on my slide. So there isn’t enough investment and there’s not enough investment in the Canadian marketplace. If we were to fund what needed to happen, and we’re talking about adaptation specific to wildfire. We haven’t even touched on hail, flood, wind. There are also very prominent perils in Canada. And so the amount of funding needed for adaptation and resilience, there isn’t enough funding in government and it would be a significant impact on taxpayers. And that’s why we’ve really focused on that concept of it has to be a public-private partnership. There has to be investment through multiple channels, through multiple different avenues to ensure that insurance industry and government and others are investing in resilient strategies across Canada to ensure homes are more adaptable to the situation we’re in and we will continue to be in.

This is not going away. So I would say I feel positive seeing all of the insurers on this call, my peers on this call, we work very collaboratively and we’re seeing more, I would say, more engagement from the industry than I’ve experienced in my career. And I know others have said similar things. So I think there’s a movement. There’s still a lot of work to do and a lot of investment to be made, but I think we’re seeing some momentum where if you’d asked me that question maybe four or five years ago, I would’ve been a bit more hesitant to say we have momentum, but I feel like we’re gaining momentum in this space, but there needs to be money from both public and private to be able to make an impactful difference.

Gabby Polanco-Sorto:

And I’ll add to that to say that I definitely agree that there’s not enough investment, but there’s also not enough movement on building codes. And that I think is really, really frustrating for us in an industry because we literally have all the data. I think Wawanesa, Mitchell, you might want to talk about it as the ICLR partnership and some of the models that they’re showing about some of the easy changes to building codes that will literally protect and save entire communities from some of the risks that we’re facing and some of the natural disasters. And it is something that we’ve been working in an industry too to get more momentum around building code changes because that will fundamentally change then at least the houses that are being built into the future and start building them for the new climate that we’re facing. And then we can focus on retrofit and et cetera.

But it definitely has been a challenge and it is one of those things that would make a very big impact, especially with Canada’s now national building strategy for houses that we are very concerned in terms of where they’re building and not changing some of the very proven solutions that can be done through building codes.

Mitch McEwen:

I’m going to build on Gabby’s point, but I get the pleasure of working with Maya. So we can chat about this later, Maya, you have more specific questions. I think for the benefit of others, Gabby’s point’s really important when we’re talking about building codes that were designed for not a rapidly changing climate. And we talk about the stock of our infrastructure in Canada. It’s widely aged, poorly maintenanced and managed, interprovincial and jurisdiction variations as well and responsibilities between municipalities, provincial governments, and federal governments. The one call that I actually wanted to make as well is we haven’t talked about nature-based solutions on this call. A very critical piece of infrastructure compared to grey. And in Canada’s context, that’s really important because we have a large geographical landmass relative to the size of our population. I think it’s something like 80% live within a hundred kilometre radius of the US border or something to that effect.

So all those northern regions, you have more urban sprawl or sparse populations. And nature is one of those ones where you can actually help reduce the strain on municipalities. And then generally speaking, they get better over time. Things like wildfire though affect those nature-based solutions directly. So I think the challenge ahead of us is how do we continue to invest in nature-based solutions while helping reduce the risks that are faced communities and give them enough time to actually mature and sustain themselves over time.

Helen Chambers:

Thank you all so much for your time, for your insights, for your expertise. I’ve personally really, really enjoyed listening to you all and I’m sure everybody has got a lot out of what’s been shared today. So thank you. Thank you to our speakers very, very much. If you found it useful and insightful, as I’m sure you have, you can access past webinars and search for specific areas of interest in our knowledge hub, which we will pop a link in the chat to. We also have a great webinar coming up, which is probably relevant to all of us in all of our roles and COVID discussions, which is around rethinking insurance for the AI era. So that’s going to be our ICMIF’s supporting member Gallagher Re. We’ll talk around emerging gaps in insurance coverage for AI-related risks and how the market is adapting to these challenges. Again, the link will be in the chat for you to be able to sign up to that.

So please share with colleagues or anyone that you think might have interested in topics. All that’s left to say is thank you again to our speakers. Thank you to everyone who joined us and for your input and questions and hopefully we’ll see many of you soon.

Mitch McEwen:

Thank you.

Gabby Polanco-Sorto:

Thank you so much. Bye.

Michelle Laidlaw:

Thanks so much.

Helen Chambers:

Bye.