
How is the “War-like Effort” on Housing Construction Going?
New data compiled by The Northern Account has uncovered that Canada is nowhere near reaching construction output required to restore housing affordability in Canada.
Even more shocking is that brand new data reveals that Canada will remain far below construction targets as far into the future as 2026.
In 2023, the CMHC Estimated that Canada would Require 5.8 Million Additional Units by 2030 to Restore Affordability
Last year the CMHC shocked Canadians by sounding the alarm on the housing supply — 5.8 million new housing units would be required by 2030 in order to restore affordability in Canada, they claimed.
In their analysis, this 5.8M unit gap represented 3.5 million units on top of what Canada was already expected to build under their business-as-usual scenario.
“We estimated that an additional 3.5 million housing units beyond what we projected would be built anyway under our “business-as-usual” (BAU) scenario would be needed by 2030 to reach this affordability target. Those 3.5 million additional units are what we call the housing supply gap”, explained the CMHC.
They broke down the housing supply gap by Province, as follows:

Earlier this month, we discussed this housing supply gap in depth in our article Canada Needs to Build the Entire Province of Ontario All Over Again to Restore Housing Affordability
Canada Needs to Build 828,570 Homes Per Year
Based on these targets, Canada needs to build 828,570 homes per year to begin to balance the housing market.
If we break it down by market, Ontario needs to build 52% of this total, at 435,000 units per year, according to calculations by The Northern Account.

New Data Suggests Canada is On Track to Build Only 27% of This Supply Gap
According to brand new CMHC data released this week, Canada is nowhere close to reaching the CMHC targets; in fact, their new projections highlight that construction output will remain stagnant until at least 2026.
Under their best case scenario, the CMHC projects that Canada will produce just 241,000 housing units per year from now, until 2026.

A simple multiplication tells us that, under their best case scenario, Canada will have only constructed roughly 713,000 housing units from January 2024 until January 2027.
Ontario Concedes it is Only Going to Reach 50% of the CMHC Target
As outlined above, Ontario alone would need to construct roughly 435,000 housing units per year from 2024 until 2030 to meet the CMHC’s housing target.
Ontario, however, has other plans — it has set its own housing target at 1.5 million homes by 2031, which is only 231,000 units per year, suggesting that Ontario has no plans to meet the CMHC target.
Given the weight of Ontario’s supply gap, this concession alone means Canada has little hope of meeting the CMHC target.
Under the Best Case Projection, Canada Would Only Build 1.56 Million Homes by 2030, Falling Short By 4.2 Million Homes
Given that Ontario has no plans to bump up housing production, the likelihood that Canada will continue on the status-quo path of producing 240,000 units per year remains high.
If we extend the CMHCs 2026 housing starts projection out to 2030, and assume that Canada continues on the status-quo path, we find that in the 6 years between 2024 and 2030, Canada will have only constructed 1.42 million homes.
This would mean Canada would be a full 4.2 million homes short of the CMHC target in 2030, and have only constructed 27% of housing supply target.
There is a lack of urgency in Canada when it comes to housing affordability, and a lot of this complacency is coming from the Province of Ontario.