Prime Minister Mark Carney’s promised new entity to spur massive amounts of housing construction will prioritize the building of affordable housing and using Canadian materials, says a consultation document published by the government on Monday.
The document shared by Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada says Build Canada Homes is also meant to accelerate the speed at which federal lands are made available for new housing, The Canadian Press reports. It will stress the use of materials, manufacturing, and construction methods that reduce the cost and environmental impact of building while delivering more homes faster.
The paper says financial and non-financial tools being explored include loans, equity investments, real property and housing investments, loan guarantees, and contributions.
Much of the discussion and analysis leading up to the announcement has focused on using Canadian materials and creating Canadian jobs to reduce sprawl while building “ultra-efficient”, low- or zero-carbon homes that are more resilient to the impacts of climate change. Just days ago, the government received praise from softwood lumber producers for a $1.2-billion diversification strategy, a response to Donald Trump’s tariff wars that will include greater reliance on domestic resources in new housing construction.
Housing and Infrastructure is still working on the program’s design and says it’s accepting feedback from the public until the end of the month, CP writes.
The document, released as part of a consultation process with developers and other industry stakeholders, says Build Canada Homes is positioned to support projects that deliver a “significant number” of affordable housing units.
It also says the government will look at projects that expand the supply of housing run by organizations like co-ops, non-profits, and Indigenous housing providers.
The document says the government will look for opportunities to use Canadian-made materials and regional production hubs, and to boost the efficiency of public dollars through tools like below-market-rate loans and private or philanthropic capital.
It will also prioritize projects that use new methods of construction, like prefabricated or 3D-printed construction.
Housing affordability was a major issue in the recent federal election, as there haven’t been enough homes built in Canada to keep up with population growth—and the lion’s share of those units are priced beyond what too many households can afford. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation said in a June report that Canada needs to build between 430,000 and 480,000 new housing units per year over the next decade, to bring housing costs back to where they were before the pandemic.
Carney promised in his election platform that his government would invest $6 billion in the Build Canada Homes initiative.
The platform said Build Canada Homes would act as a developer to build affordable housing at scale, including on public lands. It also promised to provide more than $25 billion in financing to prefabricated homebuilders in Canada, support affordable homebuilders, and set incentives for companies to hire apprentices and recent graduates by establishing new requirements on federal contribution agreements to major projects.
Caroline Desrochers, parliamentary secretary to the Housing and Infrastructure Minister Gregor Robertson, recently told CP the government is exploring options for Build Canada Homes, which could become a separate agency or a unit within Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada.
She said the government aims to launch the program in the fall and is “going to start doing work right now with what we have already” while exploring the best governance for the entity. Desrochers said the goal is to not create “more layers of bureaucracy and approvals.”
Desrochers said representatives from the government and the CMHC are on a task force created to develop options for the new program.
She said the government is also in discussion with several promoters of modular and prefabricated home companies to see what projects are ready to receive funds and get to work.
