Data suggests homeowners’ insurance in Alberta increased nearly five times in a 20-year period — the highest increase of any province.
That data, part of a study released by Statistics Canada on Tuesday, indicates homeowners’ insurance premiums in Alberta went up 391.6 per cent from December 2005 to December 2025.
More recently, rates have jumped 55.8 per cent in Alberta from December 2020 to December 2025 — significantly higher than the national average of 38.6 per cent.
Statistics Canada economist Marisa McGillivray says the study focuses on the impacts of extreme weather events across Canada, with a focus on homeowners’ insurance, and highlights the link between rising costs for insurers and the rising premiums for consumers.
“There’s just been an overall uptick in the frequency, as well as the severity, of extreme weather,” she said.
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McGillivray said “Alberta has been disproportionately impacted” by extreme weather events and subsequent insurance premium increases in recent memory, pointing to 2016 and 2024 in particular.
The Statistics Canada report points out that 2024 was the costliest year on record for extreme weather claims nationwide, with the Calgary hailstorm costing $3 billion and Jasper wildfire costing $1.3 billion in insurance claims.
“Half of that record-breaking $8.6 billion in [catastrophic extreme weather] claims occurred in Alberta,” McGillivray said.
The study says that before 2024, the costliest year on record for insurers in Canada was 2016, with $6.2 billion in catastrophic claims nationwide, primarily due to the Fort McMurray wildfire.
McGillivray said rate increases in and around Calgary are partially due to the population density in the area, “not necessarily that it’s the most risky place in all of Canada.”
“It’s not just extreme weather impacts over this timeline,” she said. “It’s also seeing increasing replacement cost factors, things like higher input prices on materials such as lumber.”
The report points out that despite last year’s weather being more mild than in 2024, costs remained higher than years prior as insurers were forced to raise rates amid economic pressures.
Barry Haggis, president of Calgary-based Young and Haggis Insurance Services, says premium increases are done out of necessity.
“Climate change has been a huge factor on our industry and claims payouts. We’re talking about what used to be 100-year storms seem to be happening every year or every second year now,” he said.
“We have wildfires now, which seem to be burning more rapid than ever. We’ve got floods. We’ve got heavy rains. … It seems to be every single year there’s that threat of a massive catastrophic loss that’s going to hit somewhere in the country, let alone Alberta.”
Haggis said the threat of extreme weather has made premiums “a difficult thing” to calculate, especially when planning and charging for “what might happen next year.”
He said that to pay out all the claims resulting from frequent storms and catastrophic losses, insurance companies must collect enough premiums to remain sustainable and profitable.
But in high-risk storm areas like northwest Calgary, insurance companies can’t simply “jack premiums up on those specific houses,” because coverage would become completely unaffordable for those homeowners, Haggis said.
“The principle behind insurance is, of course, the losses of a few get spread out amongst the many,” he said.
“So, when we do have these [catastrophic] losses due to severe weather change and climate, everybody feels it.”
Statistics Canada points out that some Alberta insurers were not profitable in 2024.
“They’re running loss ratios; they’re paying out more than they’re taking in in premiums,” Haggis said. “So they have to get that back to have a sustainable industry. It’s a difficult sell sometimes.”
Glenn McGillivray, managing director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, says the solution to rising insurance rates across Canada “is not a mystery to anybody.”
“The true answer is to embrace resilience and get these costs down,” he said.
That “resilience” includes building homes less vulnerable to severe weather events rather than building the cheapest options, managing where homes are built so people aren’t in flood zones, and implementing impact-resistant roofing.
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McGillivray also pointed to programs in other jurisdictions, like a disaster preparedness sales tax exemption in Florida that allows people to buy certain hurricane preparedness and household safety items tax-free.
“We have all the answers, we know what to do, we just have to get on with it,” he said, adding that “we do need governments at all levels to get involved in this.”
The City of Calgary’s Resilient Roofing Rebate Program, launched in 2021, provided homeowners with rebates of $3,000 to retrofit their homes to better withstand hail damage. The program ended a year later.
Now, rather than a rebate, the city says it is focusing on long-term hail resilience measures and public education.
Alberta’s Ministry of Treasury Board and Finance did not provide comment ahead of publication.
