OTTAWA, Canada (AFP) – Canada is not doing enough to track extreme weather and update infrastructure to mitigate the rising costs of storm damage, Parliament’s environmental watchdog said yesterday.

Decision-makers lack the proper tools to measure the intensity, duration and frequency of storms, Commissioner of the Environment Julie Gelfand’s audits found.

Floodplain maps are 20 years old and “obsolete”, she said in one report on extreme weather. And climate trends have not been incorporated into building codes, which will affect buildings for decades to come, according to a sister report on infrastructure.

Gutters are not equipped to handle increased rainfall, while roofs could collapse under heavy snow.

“At a time when scientists are predicting that extreme weather events, with impacts that include floods, droughts, and forest fires, will become more frequent and intense, putting an ageing and weakened infrastructure to an ever more difficult test, the time is ripe to consider the findings of the audits presented in these reports,” she said in a statement.

In a prominent recent example, wildfires in the Alberta oil patch forced the evacuation in early May of 100,000 residents of Fort McMurray and surrounding communities, and the partial shutdown of oil production.

Canada is the fifth largest oil producer in the world.

The insurance bill is expected to be steep and could soar up to US$7 billion.

Previously in 2011, most Canadian provinces experienced severe flooding.

The Government has spent little on disaster mitigation projects, while paying out more in disaster relief in the last six years than it did in the previous 39 years combined, Gelfand said.

“When resiliency is built into infrastructure, it is also built into communities as they are then better equipped to recover more quickly when disasters strike.”