Mark Carney has promised Canadians he will build more homes — should Canadians be hopeful?In this interview, Austin Thompson, senior analyst at the Fraser Institute's Centre for Municipal Studies, will dissect the budget's official "Build Canada Homes Initiative" (BCH).The initiative plans to spend $13 billion to "fast track" housing development in six different locations, Dartmouth, Longueuil, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Edmonton, starting "with up to 4,000 homes."BCH will also spend $1.5 billion on "preserving at-risk affordable rental housing," and another $1 billion on "transitional housing" in cases of homelessness.But will this truly help Canada's housing crisis? Find out in the clip below..Thompson states the government is imposing itself in the housing market in a way "that [it]hasn't in a long time in order to be a developer and financier of major housing projects.""And I just don't think that's what's needed at this point.""There's plenty of demand for housing.""There's both non-profit and for-profit private housing developers who would be building more homes were it not for the tax and regulatory burden.".Canada has experienced surging housing demand due to the rising population in only a few short years.According to the Fraser Institute article, between 2013 and 2022, "Canada’s population grew by 427,439 people annually (on average) yet only 196,872 housing units were completed annually (on average)."From the first quarter of 2024 up to the third quarter of 2025, the population has grown by over 900,000 according to Stats Canada."I think the issue in Canadian housing, which was, reflected in the budget is that, it's difficult for private home builders to build the homes that Canadians want," stated Thompson."In many cases, homebuilders face restrictions on on how high or how dense of housing they can build.".There are plenty of taxes imposed on new housing projects by municipalities, but also provincial and federal taxes.""These issues conspire to make it such that, new homes are expensive to build and some projects that would otherwise be viable are not viable.""So we end up with less housing than we need," says Thompson.Thompson highlights a key issue on BCH stating, "the real challenge here is that, the federal government may, in fact, build a number of homes,and affordable housing projects."."And I'm sure we'll get many news releases to saying, 'we supported X number of homes in this city and Y number of homes in that city.'""But what Canadians won't be seeing is that those projects took away construction workers and materials that could have otherwise been used in private sector housing developments."This is because "BCH projects will compete with private developers for limited investment dollars and construction labour. "You know, there's more where that came from — click here and check out Thompson's interview.
