A new report released this week titled “A blueprint for more and better housing” by the Task Force for Housing & Climate concludes that Canada needs to build 5.8 million new homes by 2030 in order to restore affordability.
There’s only one problem: this is 33% of housing stock currently in existence in Canada, and 400,00 more dwellings than exist in Ontario.
Thats right! Canada needs another GTA + Ottawa + Windsor + Guelph + Hamilton…. Well, you get it.
The Task Force responsible for this report is made up of 15 housing experts from across Canada, including former elected officials, mayors and chief planners, Indigenous leaders, designers, builders and developers, affordability advocates, and finance and insurance experts.
Their solution to help reach this target:
The authors of the report propose the following solutions:
- Create a national workforce and immigration strategy on housing, including construction
trades and other employment classes related to housing production. - Provide low-cost, long-term fixed-rate financing for constructing purpose-built rental housing
- Having CMHC return to its mandate of being an agency to create housing rather than just a mortgage insurance company
- Develop a procurement strategy for the innovative homes in the CMHC pre-approved catalogue, including guaranteed minimum orders
- Allow for wood-frame construction of up to 12 storeys
- Permit “as of right” secondary suites, garden suites, laneway houses, multi-tenant housing (renting rooms within a dwelling) and conversions of underutilized or redundant commercial
They also call for radical reform to the approvals process and zoning regulations:
- Repeal or override municipal policies, zoning, or plans that prioritize the preservation
of the physical character of the neighbourhood. - Exempt from site plan approval and public consultation all projects of 10 units or less
that conform to the Official Plan and require only minor variances. - Remove any floorplate restrictions to allow larger, more efficient high-density towers
No Response so Far from Politicians
While many have been sounding the alarm on the growing housing crisis for years, politicians have yet to implement meaningful change.
As recently as this week, the Premier of Ontario has even indicated that he felt allowing quadplexes in residential neighborhoods “would be a disaster”
Can Canada build an entire Province of Ontario again, within 10 years?
Time will tell, but it seems unlikely given only 223,513 units were constructed in Canada in 2023.
At this pace, Canada will construct just 1.4 million homes by the 2030 target.
Politicians need to get serious about implementing a “war-time” like construction environment. As time passes, though, the hill gets even steeper to climb, and annual construction requirements will rapidly become impossible to meet.
It needs to start now.
