Cabin owners and homeowners in Manitoba are bracing for higher insurance costs and fewer coverage options, according to CBC News.
What's happening?
Manitoba's brutal 2025 fire season burned through more than 130 properties and displaced over 32,000 residents.
That included Liane Ross-Martin and her husband Ed Martin, who saw their cabin along Wendigo Road in the Lac du Bonnet area destroyed in May.
Their property was one of 28 wiped out by a quick-spreading blaze in the area, which sits north and east of Winnipeg. Months after the fire, finding new insurance has been a struggle.
Ross-Martin contacted five providers before one agreed to offer coverage. They now pay about $1,400 (Canadian, or $1,029) extra per year for coverage, and rebuilding costs have risen about 50% since they built the property in 2019.
Ross-Martin described the ordeal as "excruciating."
Another couple, Reg and Sadie Harder, faced an even worse situation. They had recently completed a self-sufficient house in Manigotagan when wildfires swept through Nopiming Provincial Park last spring.
The Harders' insurance provider paused new policies until underground peat fires stopped burning.
The wait proved costly: their generator malfunctioned on Dec. 26, sparking a fire that destroyed the house.
Why is this concerning?
Burning fuels like oil, coal, and gas creates pollution that warms our planet, making wildfires both more frequent and more intense.
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$200 or more 💰 As these disasters worsen, insurance companies are hiking prices or even pulling back from high-risk areas.
This affects more than premiums.
Banks require insurance before approving mortgages, so losing coverage could send property values tumbling across entire regions.
Insurance companies across Canada shelled out a record $9 billion ($6.6 billion) in 2024 alone. The Flin Flon area blaze was responsible for more than $200 million ($147 million) of that total.
"We're going to have government intervention in the insurance markets, because we cannot have rates going up as quickly as we're seeing right now," said Jason Thistlethwaite, an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo.
"Impacts on the mortgage market may be that domino that falls that could trigger a more concentrated look at this."
What's being done about it?
Canada's federal government has spent years crafting a national flood insurance program, starting in 2020, but wildfire protection remains outside its scope.
Other countries like Spain, New Zealand, and Germany already provide broader multi-hazard coverage that helps stabilize rates for everyone.
If you have a cabin or home in a fire-prone area, review your policy and ask whether your maximum coverage still matches current rebuilding costs.
Contact your elected officials and urge them to expand national disaster insurance to include wildfire protection.
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