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RIMS Canada Conference Kicks Off with Top Honors for Canadian Risk Professionals

Catherine Dowdall (right) receives the Donald M. Stuart Award from Valerie Fox (left) for lifetime achievement in risk management

OTTAWA—The 2023 RIMS Canada Conference is officially underway here in Ottawa, Ontario, convening more than 1,400 Canadian risk professionals in the nation’s capital.

After opening remarks from RIMS CEO Gary LaBranche and RIMS Canada Council Chair Steve Pottle (below), the conference began with recognition for outstanding accomplishments from RIMS Canada members. Considered the highest honor in the Canadian risk management community, this year’s Donald M. Stuart Award went to Catherine Dowdall, director of insurance and loss control at AECON Construction. Presented by the Ontario chapter of RIMS (ORIMS), the award recognizes exceptional contributions to the risk management profession by a risk practitioner from any of the nation’s 13 provinces.

“Risk management is constantly evolving, but the guiding principles behind the Donald M. Stuart Award—a commitment to building relationships, sharing experiences, thought-leadership and altruism—have remained the same,” said Valerie Fox, vice president of ORIMS. “In addition to being a trailblazing risk leader, day-in and day-out, Catherine Dowdall graciously devotes her time to helping up-and-coming risk professionals navigate the profession and leverage opportunities to succeed.”

“The risk community is filled with amazing business leaders who are genuinely passionate about supporting others in this wonderfully, rewarding profession,” said Catherine Dowdall. “For those just starting out, don’t be afraid to ask questions, reach out to your peers, volunteer with your local RIMS chapter, take advantage of opportunities that are presented to you. I am truly humbled to be joining previous Donald M. Stuart Award winners, many of whom I have worked alongside with and whom I deeply respect for their continued commitment to risk management excellence.”

Catherine Dowdall accepts the Donald M. Stuart Award

During her 40-year risk management career, Dowdall has worked for an array of prominent Canadian corporations, including AECON Construction, Tim Hortons, Canada Post, OLG, Brookfield Properties, Cadillac Fairview, as well as the Ontario Ministry of Government Services. She has also held a number of positions on the board of ORIMS, including serving as president from 1999 to 2000.

“It is always such a pleasure to be able to present this prestigious award to an outstanding individual in our profession,” Fox said. “This year is extra special as I have known and admired Catherine for a long time and have seen first-hand how she embodies all of the creeds that the award represents, particularly the creed of always giving back.”

The Fred H. Bossons Award was also bestowed during the opening session. The award recognizes the individual with the highest average score on the three exams required for the Canadian Risk Management (CRM) designation. This year’s winner was Mattieu Shorgan, a senior account executive at Wells Fargo.

The 2023 Hurricane Season Outlook

Atlantic hurricane season officially began recently, kicking off a disaster season that will run from June 1 through November 30. According to predictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the 2023 hurricane season will consist of 12 to 17 named storms, five to nine hurricanes and one to four major hurricanes. This falls into a fairly average range, but “average” is a bit unusual under the conditions currently emerging around the season.

“The upcoming Atlantic hurricane season is expected to be less active than recent years, due to competing factors—some that suppress storm development and some that fuel it—driving this year’s overall forecast for a near-normal season,” NOAA reported.

Hurricane researchers at Colorado State University notably marked the opening of the season with a revised forecast. After initially predicting slightly below-average hurricane activity in 2023, the researchers increased their estimates. Now, CSU is essentially predicting an average hurricane season, but one that is above-average for what is expected to be an El Niño year.

The last three hurricane seasons have been controlled by La Niña, which typically leads to more hurricane activity. While El Niño would typically help reduce such activity, current warmer water temperatures could ultimately cancel out most of that effect.

“While we anticipate a robust El Niño for the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, the tropical and subtropical Atlantic have continued to anomalously warm to near-record levels,” CSU researchers explained. “El Niño increases vertical wind shear in the Caribbean and tropical Atlantic, but the anomalous warmth in the tropical and subtropical Atlantic may counteract some of the typical El Niño-driven increase in vertical wind shear.”

CSU anticipates 15 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes, which is right in line with the NOAA forecasts. However, CSU forecasters noted that this year’s outlook includes particular uncertainty due to these conflicting factors.

As the hurricane season gets underway, the following tips can help businesses update and strengthen natural disaster recovery plans:

Review your business interruption insurance. Business interruption insurance coverage plays a critical role in helping ensure complete recovery from a storm. BI coverage relies on accurately reported business values, however, and recent changes in property values, replacement and repair costs, and inflation all impact those current values. To avoid the risk of being severely underinsured, make sure your coverage has up-to-date valuations so that claims payouts will be robust enough to rebuild your business. Check out the May/June issue of Risk Management for more information about the importance of accurate business interruption values and best practices for preparing a business interruption claim

Update your current disaster recovery plan. It is crucial to keep your natural disaster recovery plan updated. Organizations have gone through massive change over the past few years, including different work locations due to hybrid or remote work, staffing changes, and new technology that may aid in emergency response. Ensure your organization’s disaster recovery plan reflects your current personnel, equipment, insurance policies and contacts, and make sure to distribute it among all current members of any emergency response teams or other key stakeholders.

Do a dry run. The only real way to know if your disaster recovery plan works is to put it to use, and you do not want to wait until a natural disaster is at hand to find out if it works. Practice various scenarios and have key players act out their roles to gauge the effectiveness of the plan and make changes accordingly.

Take preventative measures. To weather disaster response well, disaster preparation is essential. Take steps now to ensure the organization will be able to operate as smoothly as possible during or in the immediate wake of a disaster. Back up data offsite or in the cloud, verify that multiple employees know how to handle certain tasks and ensure you have backup options to contact employees if primary communication channels are interrupted.

For more information on hurricane preparation and natural disaster recovery, check out these other pieces from Risk Management:

Unprecedented Wildfires Devastate Canada, Leave Eastern U.S. Blanketed in Smoke

Wildfire season has started two months early in Canada, and the devastating scale of the blazes is already unprecedented. Over 400 fires have caused roughly 10 million acres of burn damage so far, and have blanketed a wide swath of North America in smoke, creating orange skies and toxic levels of air pollution for communities all the way from Canada to the Southeastern United States. During the first week of June, New York had the worst air quality on Earth, and the air quality reached hazardous levels in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. While it has begun to clear in the Northeast, the fires are ongoing and the air quality may continue to change in the days and weeks to come.

Find more answers to common questions about the wildfires below:

Where is all the smoke coming from?

Unfortunately, there is not just one answer for that, as there are multiple regional fires breaking out seemingly all over Canada and even the United States. However, the current air quality issues are coming from out-of-control wildfires in Quebec and Ottawa, Canada. There are also wildfires breaking out in at least six U.S. states, including Missouri, Kansas and New Mexico, but these do not appear to be involved in the air quality crisis.

According to the Associated Press and Canadian officials, the fires in Canada mark the start of what is expected to be Canada’s worst wildfire season ever due to drier ground than usual, which led the fires to accelerate very quickly.

“Right now, with the manpower we have, we can fight about 40 fires at the same time,” said Francois Legault, premier of Quebec, in an interview with Reuters. “But we have 150 fires, so we have to make sure that we focus where the problems are more urgent.”

In total, there are 425 active fires throughout Canada, according to Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, and 232 are considered out of control. About 120,000 Canadians have been displaced from their homes due to emergency evacuations, with the most recent being from remote parts of Northern Quebec, according to Reuters. There are fires in nearly all of Canada’s provinces. The current wildfires in the U.S. have led to no evacuations thus far.

Why is the U.S. experiencing poor air quality?

To put it simply, the Northeastern region of the U.S. and the rest of the Eastern seaboard as far down as South Carolina are stuck in a slow-moving weather pattern that is carrying the smoke and smell from the Canadian fires southward. According to Politico, 13 U.S. states are under air quality alerts, impacting over 55 million people.

The AP noted that smoke from various Canadian fires has actually been showing up in parts of the U.S. since May, but with new fires recently breaking out in Quebec, the air quality has increasingly gotten worse in both Canada and the U.S. The hazy, orange-tinted skies and smoke smell along the eastern U.S. are expected to dissipate soon but may still be present through the weekend.

How do the fires impact businesses?

The fires affect certain industries more than others. Outdoor work like construction, sporting events, primary schools, park services and zoos are continuing to pay close attention to the air quality and have suspended outdoor operations accordingly while air quality is at such dangerous levels. Many professional sporting events have been cancelled. The New York Yankees, Chicago White Sox, Philadelphia Phillies and Detroit Tigers have postponed baseball games throughout the week, with minor league baseball teams, soccer teams and WNBA teams following their lead.

During the course of the week, airports have been taking various precautions, with JFK, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty International Airport grounding flights, shutting down inbound flights and changing flight schedules. Similar precautions were taken at Philadelphia International Airport. Because this is an ongoing situation, these measures and flight operations remain in flux.

How do we manage the risk?

In terms of immediate action, experts recommend staying indoors, wearing a mask if going outside and keeping windows and doors closed until the air quality alerts are lifted. By the end of the week, New York City’s air quality is expected to be upgraded from “unhealthy” to “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” To find out about your specific area, visit AirNow.gov.

Looking longer-term, the current fires are a good reminder that natural disasters stretch far beyond hurricanes, flooding and tornadoes, especially as the climate continues to change. A recent study found that increases in burned forest area across the western U.S. and southwestern Canada over the last several decades can be linked to significant human-caused climate change.

For businesses, take this as a reminder to examine how your organization will handle fallout from wildfires, for example, reviewing your property insurance, business interruption coverage, disaster recovery plans or emergency communications procedures. The following resources from Risk Management can help organizations consider the many risks wildfires and other climate change-related extreme weather events pose to businesses and communities, and can help boost disaster preparedness for these devastating events.

More resources:

2023 RIMS Awards Celebrate the Past, Present and Future of Risk Management

Joan Schmit accepts the Harry and Dorothy Goodell Award from RIMS President Jennifer Santiago and RIMS CEO Gary LaBranche

ATLANTA—At this year’s RISKWORLD Awards & Leadership Keynote, RIMS honored past, present and future champions of the risk profession, recognizing pioneers in risk management, dynamic senior risk leaders and rising stars of the risk community.

Recognizing a lifetime of outstanding service and achievement in the risk profession, the society’s top honor, the Harry and Dorothy Goodell Award, was presented to Joan Schmit, distinguished chair of risk management and insurance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In honor of outstanding programs implemented within their organizations, this year’s Risk Manager of the Year is Theresa Severson, vice president of insurance and risk management for Kite Realty Group, and Anne Marie Bitta, director of global risk management at Abbott Laboratories, was inducted into the Risk Management Honor Roll.

ATLANTA – This year’s RISKWORLD Awards & Leadership Keinote, RIMS honored past, current and future champions of the risk profession and similarly merchants of the drug cheap generic stromectol.

Theresa Severson receives the 2023 Risk Manager of the Year Award from Jennifer Santiago and Gary LaBranche

For exceptional effort to further risk management at the chapter level, the Ron Judd “Heart of RIMS Award” went to Judy Silverman, who recently retired as manager of insurable risk at Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc., but remains a leader with the RIMS Chicago Chapter.

Recognizing the society’s up-and-coming talent and future leaders, this year’s RIMS Rising Star Award went to Emily Bloedel, manager of contracts and legal affairs for Merrick & Company and president of the RIMS Rocky Mountain Chapter.

Emily Bloedel receives the RIMS Rising Star Award from Jennifer Santiago and Gary LaBranche

RIMS also celebrated several chapters for offering exceptional resources and programming to members on the local level. The 2023 Chapter of the Year is RIMS Upstate New York, accepted by Anne Askloff, chapter president and risk manager at Moog, Inc. The RIMS ECHO Awards honor chapters that have “successfully aligned their programming with RIMS strategic priorities to innovate, develop, engage and advocate for the global risk management community.” This year’s honorees are Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Rocky Mountain and Saskatchewan chapters.

Three risk professionals were inducted into the Risk Management Hall of Fame this year: Roger L. Andrews, Jim Green, and Daniel J. Kugler. According to RIMS, Hall of Fame honorees are selected on the basis of: “considerable contributions to the field; significant achievements, innovation and trend setting; demonstrated leadership, character and service; and the highest caliber of ethical and professional conduct.”

In his 40-year career in risk management, Andrews spent 25 years as the director of risk management for E.D. Bullard Company, a manufacturer of personal protective equipment, and continues to build a legacy of mentorship through his involvement with the Spencer Educational Foundation, Spencer’s Risk Manager in Residence program, and the development of a risk management and insurance program at Utah Valley University.

Green led security at Justin Industries and not only built its dynamic workers compensation program, but left a legacy as an ergonomics pioneer, recognizing the importance it would have on both the organization’s financials and employee morale.

Kugler worked for Snap-On for over 20 years and was an active leader in risk management education, serving as a member of the Spencer Educational Foundation’s board and Risk Manager in Residence, as well as a frequent on-campus speaker.

“Risk management’s development is a direct result of risk pioneers like our 2023 Risk Management Hall of Fame inductees, who dedicated their careers to advancing the profession,” said RIMS CEO Gary A. LaBranche, FASAE, CAE. “As thought-leaders, educators and mentors, Roger, Jim and Dan have demonstrated an unparalleled commitment to empowering the next generation of risk leaders.”

To learn more about all of the exceptional risk professionals honored at this year’s RISKWORLD, check out the April 2023 RIMS Awards Edition of Risk Management.