OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the launch of Build Canada Homes (BCH) on Sunday, with initial funding of $13 billion, in the hopes of getting more affordable housing built faster in Canada.
This new federal entity will be headed by Ana Bailão, former deputy mayor of Toronto and former candidate in Toronto’s 2023 mayoral race, he added.
Carney made the announcements at a modular housing site in his riding of Nepean, in Ottawa, the day before Parliament is set to return for the fall session. He was accompanied by Housing Minister Gregor Robertson.
“Today, the Minister of Housing and I are proud to launch Build Canada Homes, a new federal entity that will supercharge housing construction across Canada,” Carney said.
BCH will have the mandate of building and financing affordable housing — defined as monthly rent or mortgage being no more than 30 per cent of pretax household income — for middle-income workers to people at the lower end of the income scale.
Those could include minimum-wage workers, seniors on a fixed income, students or people who are homeless or at risk of being homeless.
The idea is to build affordable housing at scale — ranging from transitional housing to community housing and multi-unit affordable housing — but excluding detached, single-family homes, according to a government background document provided by officials.
As a first step, BCH is partnering with Canada Lands Company to develop six sites across the country to build 4,000 factory-built homes on federal lands, with the possibility of adding up to 45,000 additional units on these sites, said Carney.
Those six sites will be in Dartmouth (Nova Scotia), Longueuil (Quebec), Winnipeg (Manitoba), Edmonton (Alberta) as well as Ottawa and Toronto (Ontario).
A senior government official said construction is likely expected to start in 2026 on those specific sites but it could take years after that before the first tenants or homeowners will be able to move into those new affordable homes.
Carney said Canada’s construction is currently too slow, too expensive and too heavily reliant on on-site methods for the housing supply needed to meet current needs.
“We need to transform the way we build by harnessing the latest technologies, and that’s why Build Canada Homes will prioritize the use of cost-efficient and modern methods of construction, including factory build, modular and mass timber,” he said.
“These homes can be standardized, mass-produced and once completed, shipped to site and assembled in days or weeks rather than months or years.”
Carney said the initial capitalization of $13 billion towards BCH will “reduce the upfront costs of building by offering flexible financial incentives to attract private capital and to catalyze large portfolio projects.”
Of that amount, $1.5 billion will be used by the Canada Rental Protection Fund to protect existing affordable rental housing and $1 billion will be reserved specifically for transitional housing for people who may experience homelessness.
BCH will also be partnering with Nunavut Housing Corporation to help build over 700 affordable housing units in the North, where there is a crucial need for more housing.
Earlier in the day, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre ridiculed the idea of getting more affordable housing built in Canada by adding yet another layer of bureaucracy to the mix.
“We have the builders, we have the trades, we have the companies. They have the money, they’d love to get building. What’s standing in the way is bureaucracy, and so Mark Carney’s solution is to add another bureaucracy that will only slow things down,” he said.
“It took him six months to set up a new office, an office that has not built a single new home,” added Poilievre, in a speech to his MPs during a caucus meeting.
A senior government official said the existing affordable housing programs, such as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC)’s Affordable Housing Fund, will eventually be folded into BCH once their current funding has dried up.
“The idea is that, as we go forward and in terms of future looking, this becomes the arm for affordable housing projects,” said the official during a technical briefing session for media.
Carney also defended his government’s new entity against critics, arguing that it is “not creating another layer” but rather “creating greater clarity.”
The government has just announced BCH, but already, it is looking at large swaths of land available to build affordable housing.
“As we stand here today, there are already 88 federal properties suitable for housing listed on the Canada (Public) Land Bank spanning 463 hectares. That’s the size of downtown Ottawa,” Carney said.
He said he has instructed his ministers to look for more federal land to build on in their respective departments.
“This land will help lower costs for builders and, most importantly, lower the rents and new home prices for Canadian families,” he said.
National Post
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