EDITORIAL: Liberal housing numbers don’t add up
· Toronto Sun
If Prime Minister Mark Carney is going to fulfill his commitment to build 500,000 new homes per year within a decade to increase affordability and lower housing prices, it’s not going to happen in the early years.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the federal crown corporation responsible for administering Canada’s National Housing Act, recently reported in its housing market outlook for this year that:
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“Canada’s economy is expected to grow slowly in 2026 …
New home construction is set to decline through 2028 as developers face high costs, weaker demand and more unsold homes. Condominium starts will be especially weak. Rental projects will continue to drive new supply but will moderate over the forecast period.”
Interim parliamentary budget officer Jason Jacques predicted in December that the contribution of the Carney government’s newly-created Build Canada Homes bureaucracy to help reach the 500,000 new homes per year target “will likely be modest,” adding “about 26,000 units over five years” – half of them affordable housing.
“While Build Canada Homes is presented as part of the government’s efforts to double the pace of housing construction over the next decade” Jacques wrote, “the government has not yet laid out an overall plan to achieve this goal.”
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According to the latest federal budget, the PBO said, spending on housing programs is actually set to decline 56% – from $9.8 billion in 2025-26 to $4.3 billion in 2028-29 – with the ending of several government programs aimed at increasing the housing supply.
The Carney government’s response to the PBO’s report was that Build Canada Homes’ initial $13-billion budget is only part of the federal response to increase the housing supply.
It will also offer $51 billion in additional support aimed at leveraging the private sector into building more housing.
The problem is that, similar to other Carney targets such as doubling Canada’s exports to non-U.S. markets within a decade to increase revenues by $300 billion and creating 125,000 new jobs through increased spending on defence, these are long-term solutions to immediate problems , contingent on the private sector’s response.
Their ultimate success will depend, to a large extent, on the uncertain future of Canada-U.S trade, given the current state of negotiations – or non-negotiations – on the Canada-U.S-Mexico Agreement which are scheduled for this year.