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Build Canada Homes Act

2026-06-05 Sitting 130 Showing 21–28 of 28

A bill to create a new federal Crown corporation called Build Canada Homes to promote affordable housing supply and innovation. In debate, the Bloc focused on how this encroaches on an area of provincial jurisdiction and touted Quebec's distinct approach to housing. The NDP critiqued the bill's lack of concrete targets, accountability measures, or a specified responsible minister. The Liberals emphasized collaboration with stakeholders. The Conservatives warned of added bureaucracy, costs and benefits to Liberal insiders.

Official Hansard ↗

Elizabeth May

Green 1:15 p.m.

“I don't see any of the specifics the other speaker claims are in this bill. It's not that long and it doesn't say what he says it does. I'd like him to point to exactly where in the bill I can find those promises.”

Ziad Aboultaif

Conservative 1:15 p.m.

“The government doesn't have its eye on the ball. I think they're only interested in bigger bureaucracies, not actually building houses. That's the problem! I want the other member to admit that's what's going on.”

Elizabeth May

Green 1:15 p.m.

“I want to say the government might still do something even if this act won't. But the act, oh this act, it's pretty pointless. Just shuffles around some names and adds a tiny bit of transparency. Not much. I want the government to actually build a ton of houses! Market, non-market, all of it. This bill? It won't do that. This bill does nothing.”

Jenny Kwan

NDP 1:20 p.m.

“I want to say it makes no sense to have CMHC for housing and now this whole other Crown corporation for housing too. But but...this bill doesn't have measures to hold them accountable! No targets. Nothing to make the houses affordable. If there's nothing to hold them accountable, what's the point of making another Crown corporation at all? Plus, the PBO says this thing would only build maybe 50 to 100 houses a year. We need 500,000! This won't do anything.”

Elizabeth May

Green 1:20 p.m.

“This Crown corporation is useless. It's a prop to send more press releases.”

Tamara Kronis

Conservative 1:20 p.m.

“This government already has a lot of agencies and ministers for housing. Do we really need another Crown corporation? This seems like a useless waste. Maybe the minister is the problem.”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, as the member pointed out in her speech, there is already the CMHC. Ottawa does not lack agencies with housing powers. On top of that, there is also the Canada Lands Company, which already has the power to develop federal land. There is Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, which already manages federal housing funding and agreements. There is the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which already has the power to finance infrastructure that unlocks housing. The last time I checked, it was a minister's job to knit all of that together and to find co-operation, so I am as baffled as she is that there is yet another Crown corporation being created. I wonder whether or not the issue here might be the minister.

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Elizabeth May

Green 1:20 p.m.

“I don't want to blame the minister. I like him. Let's just blame the whole government instead.”

Tamara Kronis

Conservative 1:20 p.m.

“We need more homes. The government's plan won't build enough. They're just making another bureaucracy.”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, when it comes to housing, bureaucrats count starts. They count units. They count dollars. They count funds, programs, agencies and promises, but in Nanaimo—Ladysmith, we count something different. We count the months our adult children have been living in the spare room because rent has eaten the down payment they were trying to save for. We count the number of graduates who cannot find a job that pays enough to cover rent. We count the number of people with no home at all as we pass them on the way to work. Before I forget, I will be splitting my time. On a more serious note, we count the graves of friends lost to addiction, the treatment beds that are not there, and the people who make it through detox only to be sent back to the same chaos they were trying to escape. We continue to measure the distance between the government's language and our reality. That distance is the distance between a young person with a diploma and a job and having no real path to owning a home in the community they grew up in. It is the distance between a person who is coming out of detox trying to stay clean and housing where drug use is not happening down the hall. Those are not separate crises. They are part of the same failure of government. We have lost the link between housing and hope. Canada does not lack for housing announcements. In the last decade, we have had strategies, accelerators, funds, agencies, accords and photo ops, including some that have their own complete purpose-built backdrop. What we do not have is enough homes that people can afford. In Nanaimo—Ladysmith, we do not have enough of the right homes for people who are trying to rebuild their lives. Now we have Bill C-20, which would create Build Canada Homes to promote, support and develop the supply of affordable housing. From the speeches, it sounds ambitious. The question is whether it will be useful once the media has packed up and gone home and the sets have been dismantled. All this bill does is create the skeleton. It creates the framework and the corporation itself. The government is presenting Build Canada Homes as a generational housing investment, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer says it will only have a modest impact. The headline number is $13 billion, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer says the actual planned spend is $7.3 billion over five years on an accrual basis. The projected result is about 26,000 homes over five years, or roughly 5,200 homes a year across the entire country. This would increase housing completions by only 2.1% above the baseline and address just 3.7% of the estimated housing gap. Even with Build Canada Homes included, planned federal housing spending is set to fall by 56%, from $9.8 billion in 2025-26 to $4.3 billion in 2028-29. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has put the scale of the new housing gap plainly: Canada needs 3.2 million net new housing units by 2035, which means an average of 290,000 units a year for a decade. The PBO also warned that this would still not fully solve affordability in every region, because income, interest rates, regional gaps and the kind of housing built all matter, as my colleagues have pointed out in their speeches. That last point matters the most to growing communities like mine, because we do not just need more housing; we need the right housing in the right places for the people who need it. Housing experts have made this same point over and over again. Mike Moffatt's report says, “Canada needs to build millions more homes, but not just any homes.” They have to be homes built for today's needs, and getting there is going to require bolder reforms, in our opinion, than those that have been put forward so far. Bill C-20 would not speed up local approvals. It would not give our provinces and municipalities the infrastructure they need. It would not service land, and it would not set binding targets for how many homes will be completed by when, for whom, at what price. What Bill C-20 would do is create another federal bureaucracy on top of at least four others in this space. There is CMHC, which already has the power to finance housing, lend, guarantee loans, invest and run federal housing programs. The Canada Lands Company already has the power to develop federal land. Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada already manages federal housing funding and agreements. The Canada Infrastructure Bank already has the power to finance infrastructure that unlocks housing. In other words, the functions are already there, and Ottawa does not lack agencies with housing powers. What it lacks is results. Building another bureaucracy means time spent setting it up. Offices need to be set up, executives hired, mandates written, files moved around and programs reorganized, and that is time and money that could be spent getting homes built. That is the problem. The government is using language that Canadians want to hear, but the structure does not match the urgency of the moment. Young Canadians understand this instinctively. We tell them to study, work, save and be patient. Then they graduate into a labour market where entry-level jobs are harder and harder to find, where rent consumes too much of their income and where ownership feels less like a goal than a memory from someone else's Canada. This week, a recent software engineering graduate came to a committee of the House to say that he could still not find entry-level work in his field. When asked whether he was working, he said yes, but not as a software engineer. The Liberal MP's reply was, “At least you're employed.” That answer reveals something deeper than one exchange. It shows a government that has lowered the bar. I will continue my speech when the House resumes next week.

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