Prime Minister Mark Carney is standing by his promise to double home construction to 500,000 units a year, even as federal data shows the target is far beyond the country’s current building capacity. Blacklock's Reporter says Carney offered no explanation for how his government plans to overcome the well-documented obstacles.“We will be our own best customer by relying on more Canadian lumber for Canadian projects,” Carney told reporters in Kelowna. “Canada’s new government has a strong mandate to get big things built faster.”He said the goal is to “build Canadian,” citing plans to prioritize domestic materials like lumber, steel and aluminum, and to double the pace of new home construction over the next decade. .According to Carney, that effort alone would double the use of Canadian softwood lumber and increase demand for structural panels by nearly a billion square feet. He did not explain how the government will meet those benchmarks.A July 24 report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation said the reality on the ground tells a different story. “New construction is slowing,” said CMHC’s Summer Update 2025 Housing Market Outlook. The agency forecast 237,833 housing starts this year — less than half the target and down from 245,367 last year. Construction activity peaked at 273,200 units in 1976..The report blamed high building costs driven by ongoing tariffs on steel, lumber and other materials. “The uncertainty and confusion around these policies has already weighed on business confidence and slowed investment,” CMHC warned. “The headwinds are real and will have lasting impacts.”A 2024 Department of Housing memo obtained through Access To Information echoed those concerns, stating bluntly that Canada will not meet its targets under current conditions. “To meet estimated housing targets Canada’s average construction rate would need to increase from 220,000 new homes built annually over the last five years to 700,000 housing starts per year, an increase of 220%,” it said..The memo also pointed to declining productivity in the construction sector, noting that fewer homes are built per worker now than two decades ago. Meanwhile, affordability has worsened, with the average home price rising by nearly 30% since early 2020 — from $540,000 in February 2020 to more than $700,000.The housing department said the situation has been made worse by a 58% increase in residential construction costs and a surge in population growth that continues to outpace housing supply.
