A new report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) says Prime Minister Mark Carney‘s new housing agency is on track to build 26,000 homes over the next five years.
That comes after Carney said during the federal election campaign that his government would double the pace of housing construction to 500,000 a year, but without specifying in that vow whether it would be the promised new federal agency that would do so.
The impact of Build Canada Homes, a new federal agency created in September, on easing Canada’s housing crisis will likely be “modest,” the PBO report said.
The PBO report says the agency is currently on track to increase housing supply by 2.1 per cent over the next five years.
“We anticipate that the contribution of Build Canada Homes will likely be modest and estimate that the program will add about 26,000 units over five years, representing a 2.1 per cent increase in housing completions relative to our baseline projection,” the PBO report said.
The PBO estimates Canada will be short 690,000 homes by 2035 and that the housing agency’s new supply will address 3.7 per cent of that housing shortfall, the report said.
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The new agency is also on track to building an additional 13,000 units of affordable housing over the next five years, the PBO report said.
However, affordability is expected to be undercut by cuts to programs that provide support to low-income families, such as the Canada Housing Benefit, the report added.
Conservative housing critic Scott Aitchison said this was an example of Carney “breaking promises” made on the campaign trail.
“The Liberal ‘Ottawa knows best’ approach is what got Canada into the housing crisis; today’s report confirms Liberals will never get us out of it,” Aitchison said.
While the federal government’s budget did not explicitly say the aim was to build 500,000 homes a year, it said Build Canada Homes would help “build millions of more homes.”
While announcing the launch of Build Canada Homes in September, Carney said the agency would build 4,000 factory-built homes on six sites “to begin,” and would have “additional capacity of up to 45,000 units.”
While the budget allocated $7.3 billion to Build Canada Homes, cuts to the budget of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) would affect CMHC’s capacity to support social housing, PBO said.
“Funding for other housing affordability programs is scheduled to expire with no renewal yet announced,” PBO said.
Federal planned spending on housing programs is set to decline 56 per cent, from $9.8 billion in 2025-2026 to $4.3 billion in 2028-29 due to the expiry of funding for existing programs and cuts set out in Budget 2025, it added.
Among the programs that will be allowed to expire is the Affordable Housing Fund, which provides capital for the construction of new affordable housing and community housing.
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