Minister says new housing agency has no targets on number of homes it will build

OTTAWA — Housing Minister Gregor Robertson tabled legislation on Thursday to establish the federal government’s new affordable housing agency, but acknowledged Build Canada Homes has no set targets on how many homes it will build.

“There aren’t top-line targets set for the number of homes to build,” said Robertson, during a press conference on Parliament Hill. “There is $13 billion allocated in Budget 2025 to Build Canada Homes and Canada Lands Co. combined that will be leveraged for maximum delivery of affordable housing.”

Build Canada Homes was introduced by the federal government back in September and is designed to primarily build non-market housing at scale. So far, the new agency has signed over 10 agreements with several cities across Canada, by leveraging the use of public land and flexible federal financing.

“We’ve advanced six major affordable housing projects on public lands that will get create over 4000 homes,” said Robertson. “We partnered with local governments to cut red tape, to waive fees, and to fast track approvals.”

In December, the Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report that estimated the agency’s efforts would result in 26,000 directly funded units over the next five years. The federal government has said the report does not take into account the units that will result from Build Canada Homes’ partnerships with private developers and its $51-billion infrastructure fund.

Still, the PBO estimates federal spending on housing programs is set to decline by 56 per cent, from $9.8 billion in 2025-26 to $4.3 billion in 2028-29, due to expiration of funding for existing programs and cuts set out in Budget 2025.

“Canada’s non-profit housing stock has dwindled to only about four and a half percent of its total housing stock, well below the G7 average,” said NDP housing critic Jenny Kwan, in an interview with the National Post. “Countries that are doing well in addressing the housing situation is sitting at about 20 per cent.”

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) estimates to restore housing affordability to 2019 levels, homebuilding must double to 430,000 to 480,000 units per year over the next decade.

A recent report by Toronto-Dominion Bank said Canada is building at an annualized pace of 264,000 units, but not all regions are equal, with housing construction in Ontario collapsing.

Conservative housing critic Scott Aitchison said an easy solution to help housing development is for the federal government and provinces to cut the GST/HST on all new homes under $1.3 million.

“No one makes more money on a house than all levels of government, and of course, they would argue that they need that money if they want to keep growing the government,” he said, in an interview with the National Post. “I would argue that the best way to get homes built in this country is to get government out of the way.”

The federal government has moved to rebate the GST for first time homebuyers, but Aitchison said the industry has been clear the first time homebuyer does not represent a large enough share of the market for the measure to move the needle on housing construction.

Robertson appeared on the Herle Burly podcast in October, and was asked why the federal government won’t take those taxes off home construction.

“I think the argument against doing that is that it’s a big large, sweeping change to make,” he said, adding that the finance department is looking at different modelling with the HST/GST.

“We can’t roll the dice with some of these bigger moves, we’ll try some incremental steps to see if they make a big difference, if they don’t then maybe we do have to make bigger moves,” Robertson added.

The federal government has tried to incentivize municipalities to cut regulations and development charges, mainly through its Housing Accelerator Fund. Since its launch in March 2023, $4.37 billion in federal funding has been committed through the program, with local governments issuing 160,585 residential building permits as a result, according to the CMHC.

The housing minister recently clawed back federal housing accelerator funding from the City of Toronto, after its city council failed to implement citywide zoning for sixplexes, in an effort to boost housing density.

Mike Moffat, economist and founding director of the Missing Middle Initiative, said the housing accelerator program did have some successes, but the enforcement portion of the program was lacking.

“I think it was a good idea,” he said. “I do think it did have some benefits, but it wasn’t implemented nearly as well as it could have been.”

National Post

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