When Great Slave MLA Kate Reid’s home insurance renewal arrived in her mailbox a few weeks ago, she opened it to discover her premium had risen by 82 percent.
In the NWT legislature last week, Reid said she is not the only facing “extreme jumps in home insurance costs.”
She said conversations with constituents lead her to believe “50-percent home insurance jumps are the norm right now.”
While the exact drivers of northern home insurance increases are not clear, floods and wildfires have had a major impact on NWT residents – and as a consequence, some impact on insurers – over the past few years.
The territory’s finance minister, Caroline Wawzonek, said the NWT government doesn’t have a lot it can do to help.
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Wawzonek said the GNWT taxes insurance companies but has kept that rate lower than in Yukon or Alberta, calling it a “drop in the bucket” of the overall system. The territory is also working, she said, to bring some schools into the GNWT’s insurance package to help them “manage their insurance rates.”
“But in terms of residential insurance or small businesses,” said Wawzonek, “there’s not levers in our hands.”
This is not the first time some residents have raised the issue of spiralling home insurance costs after 2023’s wildfires. In some parts of the territory, even getting insurance in the first place remains somewhere between difficult and impossible.
Reid said the increase to her own home insurance premium appeared to be for no reason other than its location in the NWT.
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“I did not take out a claim against my insurance when we evacuated in 2023. I’m highly fortunate that my spouse’s family lives in Alberta and we could stay with them for the duration,” she said.
“There’s no other reason for this cost except our location.”
Wawzonek said rates are rising across the country. Separately, industry group the Insurance Bureau of Canada has said 2024 was the nation’s most expensive year on record in terms of payouts, pointing to the likes of Jasper’s wildfire and flooding in Ontario.
“The reality is that climate change is fuelling these severe weather events,” Insurance Bureau of Canada national director of climate change Jason Clark told the CBC last month. Clark said there had been “an increasing frequency, severity and cost associated with that.”
But nowhere else in Canada do average rates appear to have jumped on a scale like the one Reid reported last week. For the most part, according to one study by an insurance rate comparison service, 2024 rates across the country appeared to be about seven to eight percent higher than they were the year before.
“Skyrocketing” renewals in the NWT are hurting family budgets, Reid said, calling on the GNWT to use its presence on a federal insurance working group to advocate for residents – and consider adding consumer protections to territorial legislation.
Wawzonek said she was happy to consider amendments to legislation, while noting that process is at an early stage, and said she would look for “any best practices happening” elsewhere.
“Cost increases are happening everywhere and it’s an issue that’s coming up, so if there’s opportunity to learn from others or to utilize other practices, I’d be happy to share that information and to put it forward,” the minister said.
