CALGARY — Prime Minister Mark Carney is being called out by critics after a recent video on his X account promoting the federal housing initiative Build Canada Homes included footage from a September photo-op that reports say was staged.“We launched Build Canada Homes last fall, and it’s already speeding up the pace of homebuilding — with thousands of new homes underway,” Carney posted..In the video, it also said, “We’re supercharging housing construction with Build Canada Homes to bring the housing supply up, so your costs come down.”However, X users were quick to challenge the message..Political commentator Michael Thomlinson said, “You're still showing footage of the Potemkin village you spent hundreds of thousands of dollars erecting and then disassembling just for a photo-op. You're a liar.”.Another commentator, Kat Kanada, added, “Costs are not gonna come down if you don't radically reduce immigration. And you and your ilk are all about bringing Canada's population to 100 million by the end of the century.”The controversy goes back to Sept. 14, when Carney officially launched Build Canada Homes at a site near Ottawa.Carney said the new agency would oversee plans to build 4,000 homes on six federally owned sites as part of its initial $13-billion budget.During the announcement, Carney stood in front of two under-construction homes and explained that “the two sets of homes behind me were manufactured in two days, assembled on site in one day.”“We wanted to keep the townhouses open; we held back the workers from finishing them so you could see how things fit together,” Carney said, adding that one of the homes was being shipped to Nunavut.Once the press conference was over, both homes were dismantled, and the site was returned to what it had been before, an empty patch of government land located near the Ottawa airport.Postmedia returned to the site four days later and confirmed that the lot was still empty.Documents later released by the Privy Council Office confirmed the staging of the site, describing the homes as a “demonstration” by modular home builder Caivan Homes..Canada slashes immigration targets for 2026 — critics say that doesn't go far enough.Criticism was swift, as Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, called the demonstration misleading.“Carney billed taxpayers for a very expensive photo-op. He shouldn’t be billing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars so he can pretend to be Bob the Builder,” he said.In a December statement from the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), it was projected that Build Canada Homes would generate roughly 26,000 units over five years—a 2.1% increase in housing completions compared with baseline projections.However, the PBO report notes that overall federal housing spending is expected to “fall 56% from $9.8 billion in 2025–26 to $4.3 billion in 2028–29,” despite new funding for Build Canada Homes.Critics have also pointed out that the government has not released a detailed plan to meet its goal of doubling housing construction within the next decade.This is especially confounding, as Canada’s recent 2026–28 Immigration Levels Plan shows a modest drop in permanent resident admissions, but when temporary worker visas are included, total arrivals will still exceed 821,000 in 2026, once again fuelling the ongoing debate within the country about housing demand, costs, and the impact of mass immigration on the market.
