Prime Minister Mark Carney introduced his new housing policy, Build Canada Homes on Sunday in a press release posted to the prime minister’s government website.
He got the whole Canadian housing situation wrong in the opening line of the release, writing, “Canadians are in a housing crisis” which is only partially true.
It’s the typical fearmongering of Canadians by the Liberals, who, it seems, can only govern by crisis to get the attention of their cult followers.
The Canadian Real Estate Association reported on Monday the supply of homes in housing markets across the country has increased almost every month of 2025 so far.
The tone of the release leaned more toward the truth in the second line: “Despite recent improvements in several cities, far too many Canadians, particularly young Canadians, are struggling to find homes they can afford.”
And that’s the truth. Canada has a huge home affordability crisis, created in no small part due to the Justin Trudeau Liberals overseeing the Bank of Canada taking its overnight rate to a historic low of .25% when COVID-19 arrived in the country.
That low overnight rate created a wave of Canadians buying homes with record-low mortgage rates, pushing home prices into the stratosphere as demand outstripped supply.
The supply-demand tsunami was exacerbated by the Trudeau Liberals immigration policies, which between 2020 and the second quarter of 2025 saw 2.2 million people obtain permanent residence in Canada (per Immigration News Canada), while giving no concern about how to house them.
It would have taken 490,000 new homes starts per year to house those immigrants, while the annual rate of new starts in Canada hovers at around 220,000 per year (per Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.).
The second big error in Carney’s release was the phrase, “Canada’s new government.”
The Liberal caucus is basically the same as was Trudeau’s, the main exception being Justin Trudeau isn’t part of it.
But then, error number three, when the release read, paraphrasing, the new agency is a bold approach with unprecedented investments, which is government-speak for the billions of taxpayer dollars being thrown at housing.
Carney said the Build Canada Homes project will receive an initial $13 billion of taxpayer bucks, making the $4.44 billion the Liberals, under Trudeau, poured into its Housing Accelerator Fund look tiny by comparison.
According to the release, here’s what we get for our additional $13 billion ‘investment:’ “Build Canada Homes will help fight homelessness by building transitional and supportive housing, working with provinces, territories, municipalities, and Indigenous communities. It will build deeply affordable and community housing for low-income households, and partner with private market developers to build affordable homes for the Canadian middle class.”
As an entity, Build Canada Homes will not be a developer, per se, rather working with private sector partners in the building industry and other levels of government as the facilitator of the funds, and leveraging public lands for housing so private builders can focus on building by taking land costs out of the equation, according to the Carney press release.
To give credit where credit is due, a focus on non-market housing and removing land costs by utilizing public lands are the right approach.
Also on the Build Canada Homes to-do list is using modular, off-site building techniques, bulk procurement of materials and long-term financing.
Plus, in response to the buy Canadian campaign brought on by US tariffs, Build Canada Homes will prioritize using Canadian lumber, as well as steel, aluminum, and other materials manufactured in Canada.
There are a number of other important pieces to the initiative, with can be seen at Build Canada Homes.
The concern, in this corner, is the very likely threat Build Canada Homes will devolve into just another Canadian government housing bureaucracy, with one department to order construction nails, another department to count the nails when they arrive and even another department to count the number of nails damaged during the construction process, ad infinitum.
The Housing Accelerator Fund program, while being touted by the municipalities as a successful and worthwhile endeavor, had consequences no level of government had foreseen.
The blanket upzoning bylaws, brought on as a result of the Housing Accelerator Fund and adopted across Canada have resulted in: city councils going against the wishes of citizens; neighbours being pitted against each other; destroyed the culture of established communities; lawsuits being filed against municipalities; and more, all the while doing very little, if anything, to add affordability to Canada’s housing.
Nothing is perfect, but the Carney government must ensure steps are in place to prevent any such consequences, other than success, in providing affordable housing.