Canada: Storm exposes civic infrastructure weakness

The Vancouver Sun reports that severe weather events such as superstorm Sandy are creating a new, $1-billion baseline for annual severe weather payouts by Canada's property insurers.

"On average, Canada now experiences 20 more days of rain compared with the 1950s," said the June 2012 report prepared for the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) by The Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. The report also says that water damage, including storms, has surpassed fire as the leading cause of claims in Canada, the Vancouver Sun further mentions.

Measures to avoid disaster don't always have a big price tag attached, IBC government relations manager Serge Corbeil said. "Adapting the building code is not necessarily a cost, or it's a very minor cost, to the price of a home," he also said.