Alberta home insurance premiums up 392% in 20 years

Alberta homeowners have faced the steepest insurance premium increases in Canada over the past two decades, with costs rising 391.6 per cent from December 2005 to December 2025, according to Statistics Canada data released Tuesday.

The province has been hit particularly hard by extreme weather. Half of the record $8.6 billion in catastrophic insurance claims across Canada in 2024 occurred in Alberta alone — driven by the Calgary hailstorm ($3 billion) and the Jasper wildfire ($1.3 billion). In the past five years alone, premiums have jumped 55.8 per cent in Alberta, well above the national average of 38.6 per cent.

Statistics Canada economist Marisa McGillivray said the study links rising insurer costs directly to consumer premiums. "There's just been an overall uptick in the frequency, as well as the severity, of extreme weather," she said. Alberta has been "disproportionately impacted" by 100-year storms that now seem to occur every year or two, she added.

Beyond weather, the report points to rising replacement costs for materials like lumber — a factor that persists even when annual weather is milder than the prior year. Barry Haggis, president of Calgary-based Young and Haggis Insurance Services, said the unpredictability makes pricing difficult. "What used to be 100-year storms seem to be happening every year or every second year now," Haggis said. Insurers must collect enough premiums to remain sustainable while paying out increasingly frequent claims.