Originally published in The Globe and Mail, September 17, 2025
When areas in Bedford, Nova Scotia, experienced more than 250 millimetres of rain in just days in July 2023, the resulting devastation caused country-wide alarm. Considered one of the highest impact flash floods in Canadian history, the incident served as a stark reminder how extreme weather events increasingly place communities at risk.
Flooding, the most common and costly disaster in Canada, already incurs nearly $800-million in insured losses annually. What’s more, climate models predict that events that occurred once every two decades in Canada could happen every five years by the end of the century, making projections based on historic data inherently inaccurate…