Canadian business leaders are turning their gaze from storms to spreadsheets, as climate-related threats fall out of the country’s top five risks and economic anxieties dominate the latest World Economic Forum (WEF) survey.
In 2024’s Canadian results, “Extreme weather events” ranked third, sitting alongside familiar macro threats such as economic downturn, labour shortages and inflation. Twelve months on, climate risk has vanished from the top five entirely – replaced by a mix of economic and societal concerns, from poverty and inequality to adverse outcomes of artificial intelligence and a surge in misinformation and disinformation.
The new list tells us that Canadian executives are far more worried about keeping their businesses viable than about the next catastrophic storm.
That doesn’t mean climate change has become less real or less costly. But it does suggest that, as policy uncertainty and economic headwinds gather, climate has been crowded out of the immediate risk horizon in boardrooms and C‑suites.
For insurers and brokers, that shift matters. It changes the conversations clients want to have, the scenarios they’re modelling and, ultimately, the coverages they’re prepared to pay for. It also raises a critical question: what does it mean when economic and social instability trump climate in a country that is already experiencing more frequent and severe weather losses?
For Marsh Advisory Canada’s Daniel Kotwinski (pictured left), the most striking Canadian change versus other geographies is precisely this retreat of climate-related risk in the rankings.
“From my perspective, I think the most important part of the Canadian change from what we saw in some of the other geographies was the extreme weather events,” he said. “Even as you go into past years, extreme weather events have always been quantified within the top risks. And in Canada, you see that a lot of our risks have shifted away from that type of environmental risk into economic risks.”
Zurich Canada chief risk officer Manuel Lewin (pictured right) sees a similar pattern when he compares Canada with the global WEF results.
“I think at a global level, that shift away from the more environmental, climate-related risk factors has been very notable. Japan, South Korea and France are the only G20 countries that still have that in their top five.”
For Lewin, it’s not a surprise that climate has been nudged aside, given what else is on the minds of business leaders in this country.
“It’s not entirely surprising that economic risks have taken centre stage, with inflation and broader macroeconomic factors now in play,” he said.
If climate has moved out of frame, it’s largely because economic and trade uncertainty has moved centre stage. Kotwinski links the shift directly to what Canadian businesses are experiencing around tariffs and trade relationships.
“I think that's being driven by the shifting tariff policies and some of the economic signals that we're seeing,” he said. “And that represents the fact that a lot of our business leaders are very focused on the health of their business, and how to make sure that their business strategy reflects the environment. That's one of the biggest changes that I've seen.”
Those pressures are crystallizing around the looming renegotiation of the Canada‑US‑Mexico Agreement (CUSMA or USMCA in the US) and the ripple effects of evolving trade policy.
“I do think that a lot of that is really being driven by the USMCA review that's expected to happen this year,” Kotwinski said. “What we've seen from that evolution of trade policy over the course of the past year, I think that's actually hit Canada pretty significantly.”
The impact is not abstract. It is playing out sector by sector, particularly in industries that have been explicitly targeted by tariffs and trade measures.
“As I speak to some of our clients and leaders, a lot of business strategy has been built around that [USMCA trade] partnership that we have,” he said. “And given the fact that it's been changing so rapidly, especially in some of the industries that have had very specific tariffs targeted at them, like steel, aluminum, lumber… our clients and our business leaders are having to shift their business strategy very rapidly.”
The consequence, he added, is a wholesale re-evaluation of risk priorities.
“That's why I think we're seeing a very significant shift in how we're looking at the risk landscape in Canada, just because it's a necessity in order to make sure that our businesses can continue to thrive,” Kotwinski said.
Lewin points to another telling evolution in the rankings: a pivot within social risks themselves. Economic inequality, which featured for Canada last year, has dropped off even as it remains a concern elsewhere.
Lewin noted that while poverty and inequality appeared as a Canadian risk, it has now been replaced domestically by concerns about unemployment and the labour market. He suggested this may simply be “the flip side of economic inequality,” even as affordability remains a serious issue in many parts of the country.
Those qualitative impressions are borne out in the WEF numbers, which show a marked reordering of Canada’s risk priorities over just one year.
2024’s top five risks for Canadian business leaders were:
In the latest survey, the top five have reshuffled and refocused:
Economic threats – downturn, labour/talent shortages and inflation – remain firmly entrenched. But climate has fallen out of the top tier, while social cohesion and technological disruption have moved up the agenda, with poverty and inequality, AI risks and misinformation all entering the top five.
