Prime Minister Mark Carney launched Canada’s new National Food Strategy, aimed at bringing down the cost of groceries for Canadians and boosting domestic food production across Canada by growing produce year-round.
But some experts say expanding greenhouse production is easier said than done.
The federal government is planning to spend $750 million to “drastically expand year-round Canadian production of fruits and vegetables,” Carney said Thursday.
This includes scaling up production through greenhouses, vertical farms and other enclosed growing spaces.
“It’s already a big sector,” said Barry Prentice, professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business.
In 2025, greenhouse area in Canada increased to 35.9 million square metres.
However, the greenhouses are “centred in Ontario, and around the Leamington area, in British Columbia, and some in Quebec,” Prentice said.
Ontario alone is home to nearly two-thirds (64.9 per cent) of the greenhouse area in Canada, followed by B.C. (17.4 per cent) and Quebec (10.4 per cent).
The federal government’s support for greenhouses, hydroponics and other controlled environment agriculture will build a “stronger, more self-sufficient food supply chain” for Canada, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association said.
The commitments in the National Food Strategy “represent the highest investment in the fresh produce sector in recent history,” CMPA president Ron Lemaire said.
The Canadian Federation of Agriculture lauded the strategy’s emphasis on “advancing controlled environment agriculture.”
The National Food Strategy makes a “sizable investment in greenhouse production,” said Michael Widener at the University of Toronto’s department of geography and planning.
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“We’re so reliant on importing fruits and vegetables. Close to 90 per cent of our fruits come from outside of Canada and around 70 per cent of our vegetables. This would be a meaningful increase in what’s done domestically,” Widener said.
However, he added that it would prove very difficult to scale up production to the point where it would replace all imported produce, because building greenhouses at that scale would be too expensive.
“It’s more expensive. It is difficult to grow the large volume of fruits and vegetables that consumers want in the country through greenhouses,” he said.
Most greenhouses cost US$5 to US$35 ($7 to $49) per square foot, according to estimates from U.S. construction company CraftCamp.
In Canada, a typical small to medium-sized commercial greenhouse can be anywhere between 1,000 and 10,000 square feet, while a large-scale greenhouse can start from 10,000 square feet and run into several acres, according to Quebec-based greenhouse maker Harnois.
“It’s just easier to grow fruits and vegetables in an outdoor setting in climates that are where those foods are from than it is to sort of try to engineer it in a colder climate like Canada,” Widener said.
Growing produce year-round in Canada is also going to cost a lot more energy in Canada’s cold climate, Widener said.
“We’re going to have to actually shine the fake sunlight onto our plants, in a way that wouldn’t have to happen if it was grown in the southern U.S. or Mexico. It’s more energy-intensive, it’s more labour-intensive and our ability to do it across bigger plots of field is going to be limited,” he said.
Greenhouse production and sales in Canada have been growing consistently, data shows. In 2025, greenhouse sales increased to $6.5 billion, Statistics Canada said.
Tomatoes were the top-selling greenhouse crop in Canada, followed by cucumbers. Production has been growing for strawberries, lettuce and herbs as well.
However, Canada’s ability to grow more vegetables and fruits is “limited,” Prentice said.
Some plants “just won’t do as well as others in the greenhouse environment,” Widener said, adding that Canadians should consider what’s in season when looking for fruits and vegetables in the grocery aisle to keep costs down.
“Perhaps it’s not reasonable for us to be thinking about having oranges year-round every winter. Because oranges in December just aren’t something that are going to be available to us here in Canada,” he said.
While greenhouses can help build a “resilient and robust food system” in Canada, “greenhouses won’t be the only solution,” Widener said.
Since nearly 40 per cent of Canada’s fresh fruits and vegetables come from the United States, the solution for Canada’s food insecurity might lie in diversifying trade relations, he added.
“If we really want to keep consuming things like strawberries or cherries or grapes year-round, we’re going to have to adjust the ways that we import those kinds of foods and think about different trading partners, maybe across South America, across the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans. But this strategy doesn’t really address that,” he said.
In the last year, Canada has inked several agreements with Asian countries, including deals on agricultural produce.
“Bananas are already really cheap, and we’re importing them from 10 different countries, Ecuador being one of the largest. You have to also remember that if we don’t import from countries, they don’t have any money to buy from us,” Prentice said.
“Trade works in two directions.”
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