Human Resources Committee on April 20th, 2026

[The Chair (Robert Morrissey (Egmont, Lib.)), Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Good afternoon, committee members. I would like to open the meeting.

Welcome to meeting number 33 of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Friday, March 13, 2026, the committee is meeting on Bill C-20, an act respecting the establishment of Build Canada Homes.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members and witnesses are attending virtually and in person in the room. The clerk has advised me that all those attending virtually have been sound-tested and meet the specifications of sound quality for meeting virtually.

Before we begin, I would ask those in the room to please silence your devices, and for the protection of our interpreters, please refrain from tapping on the microphone boom. You have the option of participating in this meeting in the official language of your choice. Please ensure that your headset is on and that you're on the correct channel to participate in the language of your choice.

If you're appearing virtually, please click on the globe icon at the bottom of your Surface and choose the official language of your choice. If there's an interruption in interpretation services, please get my attention. We'll suspend while they are being corrected.

Please direct all questions through me, the chair. Wait until I recognize you before proceeding.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses for the first hour. From the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, we have Tim Ross, chief executive officer, here in person. From the Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain, we have Catherine Lussier, coordinator, by video conference. From the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, we have Richard Lyall, president, by video conference.

Each witness has five minutes to make their opening statement. I would ask witnesses to stay as close to the five minutes as possible.

We'll now begin with Mr. Ross, who's in the room, for his opening statement.

Mr. Ross, you have five minutes.

[Tim Ross, Chief Executive Officer, Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for having me here today.

My name is Tim Ross. I'm here on behalf of the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, or CHFC, which represents housing co-operatives across Canada.

There are over 2,200 non-profit housing co-operatives across the country, home to a quarter of a million Canadians. For over five decades, co-operatives have proven their worth, providing secure and affordable long-term housing managed by their residents and well rooted in the community.

Bill C‑20, an act respecting the establishment of Build Canada Homes, is a truly rare opportunity to scale up and focus on non-market housing models that are already successful, such as co-operative housing. If Build Canada Homes wants to deliver real results—in other words, build better housing, not just build it faster—it clearly needs to prioritize non-market housing like co-ops. This would increase non-market supply in Canada, support good jobs and build housing that would serve the community for a long time to come.

Today I'd like to share three concrete recommendations to improve Build Canada Homes and maximize results.

First, let's invest now in shovel-ready co-operative housing projects with long-term, predictable funding and financing. Co-ops are building again at scale. Since the co-op housing development program launched in June 2024, over $1.2 billion has been committed to nearly 2,800 new co-op homes, with roughly 1,550 under construction as of December 31, and there are more where that came from.

We have thousands of units in our co-op pipeline thanks to the momentum of the co-op housing development program. However, the pipeline is at risk as available funding runs out. To deliver at scale, non-market developers need long-term, predictable funding and financing tools, and they need workable guarantee and security requirements. To enable success, BCH needs to effectively coordinate with other federal entities like CMHC and with provincial partners.

I would highlight that as Build Canada Homes is scaling up a build focus, several programs essential to the sustainability and growth of non-market housing have been cut, have expired or will soon expire, including seed funding and preservation funding. The federal government should clearly recommit to these measures going forward. This is the moment to keep shovel-ready non-market projects moving and to set Build Canada Homes up for long-term success by focusing on predictability, permanent affordability and enduring public value.

Second, Build Canada Homes must advance reconciliation through indigenous-led housing. Indigenous households face some of the most severe housing inequities in Canada, including in urban, rural and northern communities. Solutions must be culturally appropriate and indigenous-led. We recommend a clear “for indigenous, by indigenous” mandate for a meaningful portion of Build Canada Homes projects, backed by indigenous leadership in governance, program design and delivery.

Third, rental assistance must be a core pillar of national housing policy. If Build Canada Homes is to deliver genuinely affordable housing, affordability must be defined on an income basis, not only against market rents. Many households—seniors, persons with disabilities and families on fixed or low incomes—can't even afford modest rents tied to market costs. That's why rental assistance must remain a core pillar of national housing policy.

Thousands and thousands of households in co-op and non-profit housing face the expiry of federal rental assistance in a matter of months. We urge the federal government to renew that assistance permanently so that deeply affordable homes are protected while we build new supply. Build Canada Homes should also integrate rental assistance into a portion of the homes it develops, to create deeper affordability for low-income and moderate-income households.

In closing, Canada does not lack housing solutions. We lack the scale and policy predictability needed to deliver. Co-op housing is proven, resilient and community-driven. With Bill C-20, we encourage you to prioritize non-market housing, provide predictable, long-term funding and financing tools, ensure a meaningful “for indigenous, by indigenous” stream, and renew and embed rental assistance so that affordability is truly income-based.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Ross.

Ms. Lussier, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Catherine Lussier, Coordinator, Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Members of the committee, thank you for taking the time today to hear our comments on Bill C‑20.

To give you a brief overview, I would say that the Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain, or FRAPRU, is a province-wide organization with about 150 members across Quebec. We obviously represent tenant households who are poorly housed and often have low or modest incomes.

Build Canada Homes is an opportunity to change or rectify certain federal programs that have not served as well as they should have within the framework of Canada's national housing strategy. We think it's essential that protecting, respecting and implementing the right to housing be enshrined in Build Canada Homes' mission, particularly to reflect Canada's obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, but also to ensure the realization of the right to housing. In fact, Build Canada homes is one of the tools that must translate this commitment to realizing the right to housing for all. In our view, this is in line with Canada's national housing strategy, which is coming to an end. We also see Build Canada Homes as one of the tools stemming from this strategy.

This is also an opportunity to clarify, in particular, what is meant by affordability. Obviously, the current definition is based on total household income, not just on tenant households, which, in our opinion, creates unaffordability for tenants who genuinely need housing. This definition must therefore be based on the payment capacity of tenant households rather than on the market if we truly want to achieve affordability for tenant households that are currently at risk of homelessness, and effectively combat the homelessness crisis and the housing crisis.

In our opinion, Build Canada Homes must also include social housing as one of the pillars for realizing this right to housing in its objectives, mission and the means it employs to achieve them. Social housing generates significant economic and social benefits. We've also seen that it truly meets the needs of poorly housed households.

Obviously, public investments must be made to truly enable the construction of affordable social housing immediately, not just later. We have concerns about the current financing methods, which risk creating unaffordability. We're also concerned that the sustainability of these homes will disappear if clear guidelines are not established to preserve not only that affordability, but also the homes that will be publicly financed.

Our recommendations are as follows: First, the right to housing must be enshrined in Build Canada Homes' mission, and social and community housing must be recognized as a pillar for achieving affordability—immediate affordability. Furthermore, adequate funding for these solutions must obviously be secured to ensure that these housing projects are realized and allow poorly housed tenants move in.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Lussier.

Mr. Lyall, I would remind you, while you are participating in the meeting, to please keep your camera on.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Richard Lyall, President, Residential Construction Council of Ontario]

Indeed. My apologies. I didn't want to be a distraction.

Thank you, Chair Morrissey and members of the committee, for providing me with the opportunity to speak to you today about Bill C-20, the enabling legislation for Build Canada Homes.

RESCON is a council of builders located in Ontario, although many of our members build across Canada and in the United States. In fact, one of our members is the number one privately held builder in the United States, and we have three of the top 10 builders down there, so we build elsewhere too. We also have a council for all our subtrade associations and for the civil sector for infrastructure, because we need infrastructure to build on.

Over the years, we've built millions of homes successfully. The private sector is 90% of the market. The industry across Canada is $160 billion per year. It's huge, to put things in perspective there.

We've faced challenges before. Remember that in the 1960s and 1970s, we had half the population and were building the same amount of housing we are building today nationally. How did we do it? That was a process of government innovation, finance innovation and industry innovation. We created the flying forms and the composite crews. We did a remarkable job. That's where 80% of our rental housing comes from.

Now we find ourselves in a bigger housing crisis. The severity varies across the country, and there are needs right across the board. I mentioned the private sector, but we do need social housing. We have people who, through no fault of their own, can't afford housing, and the state needs to act there.

Unfortunately, right now, the people who are most severely affected by this are younger people. If you look at the demographics, only a third of people under the age of 40 are homeowners, and if you look below 25, the numbers get kind of silly. That has changed in less than a generation. A lot of young people have simply lost hope, and that's not correct. The demographics aren't very good.

A safe, secure, comfortable and affordable place to call home is vitally important. It is an economic need. It's like food insecurity. People confuse those sometimes. It's not a want. The economics of housing is not a want for many people; it's an absolute need.

How did we get here? There has been a tsunami of contributing factors, but the biggest ones in the last 20 years have been taxes, fees and levies on new housing development charges. We did the research on this, by the way. For example, in Ontario and the Lower Mainland of B.C., 35% to 40% of the cost of a new home is taxes, fees and levies. It wasn't like that a generation ago. It's grown exponentially.

We've had mounting process and planning barriers to new housing. Things that take years and months should be done in weeks and days, and we know we're behind other jurisdictions. We're grateful to the federal and provincial governments for finally getting aligned on sales taxes and on the rebate there, even though we don't have the regulations yet. We did have the development charge announcement, but it's just an announcement at this stage. That needs to be sorted out.

We have spent tens or hundreds of thousands—I don't know how much money we have spent—on research, largely with CANCEA, the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis, on infrastructure, on taxation and on the consequences of inadequate housing.

The purpose of Build Canada Homes is fantastic if you read the objective, and it's always good to go back to first principles. It's a huge job. Done properly, there's an unparalleled opportunity to move the dial on housing. The enabling legislation gives the scope of that and gives Build Canada Homes the opportunity to do that, but systemic improvements are needed badly, especially where productivity is concerned.

Modernization is desperately needed too. We know from the OECD and the World Bank that we are in last place in how we get things done. Why is a longer conversation, but through proptech, contech, technology improvements and modernization, I think we can achieve a lot here, and Build Canada Homes can play a very important role in that.

We've visited other jurisdictions. We've gone to other countries that are leaders in modern methods of construction, which really aren't modern. We've been building off-site in Canada for 100 years. It's not something new, but it's something that probably needs to be expanded. There are some opportunities there, but it's not the solution to our troubles.

On data—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Wrap it up shortly, Mr. Lyall. We're over five minutes.

[Richard Lyall]

I apologize. I have one last point before I say thank you again.

The key thing here is implementation. The key thing we need to do is start modelling things properly. If we create new initiatives, we have to model. We can do that through modelling agencies, like CANCEA with Onemodel—that kind of thing—and we can ask, “If we're going to do this, what does the result look like?” Then we have to measure results against targets. We're missing our targets badly.

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

We'll now begin the six-minute round of questioning with Mr. Aitchison.

You have six minutes.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses. We really appreciate your being here and offering your insights and suggestions. Witnesses today have lots of experience in the housing space.

I want to start with Mr. Ross.

Thank you, Mr. Ross, for your presentation. I'm a fan of co-op housing. I think it's a great model, one of many.

I like the recommendations you've come up with, but I'm wondering if I can go back for a minute to the announcement that was made in the federal budget a couple of years ago on an investment in co-op housing specifically. I understand that this fund was actually managed through the CMHC. Am I correct in that?

[Tim Ross]

That's correct.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Can you tell me your experience or the experience of your members in dealing with the CMHC in accessing those funds and getting more co-op housing built? Was there anything in those interactions and that experience that would lead you to believe that the government needed another new agency to address the issues?

[Tim Ross]

The co-op housing development program was co-designed with the co-operative housing sector and was launched in June 2024. We view this program as a highly successful program that has rapidly committed to a significant pipeline of development-ready projects. It's attracted significant interest, and—

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

So it's worked well.

[Tim Ross]

It's working quite successfully.

We would hope that in the transition to Build Canada Homes, there is a successor investment framework that is as clear, long-term and predictable and that helps us to continue to deliver on the co-op housing pipeline.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Thank you. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like it worked really well with the CMHC.

Is it safe to say that because it was working well, you're not too sure why a new agency needed to be created?

[Tim Ross]

I can see the merits of the legislation and the merits of creating a single window for policy and program delivery with Build Canada Homes. The implementation needs to be very well thought through so that it is additive and enhancing, not duplicative, and does not add more red tape, if that's what you are getting at.

We think the co-op housing development program has been quite successful so far and would seek to create a successor investment framework that is as successful and as clear as what we have developed with the co-op housing development program.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Thanks very much. I appreciate that.

Mr. Lyall, you spoke about the biggest barriers to getting homes built in Canada, speaking specifically to market housing. I'm wondering if I can follow the same line of questioning with you. Thinking of the biggest barriers to getting homes built, if market homes are more than 80% of housing stock in this country, what are your thoughts on a fourth federal housing agency? Was that necessary? What tools will this thing have, do you think, that the Canada Lands Company or the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation needed or should have had?

[Richard Lyall]

That's a great question.

I remember my time as a graduate student under Carolyn Tuohy at the University of Toronto looking at program development, policy design and administrative theory. If this is what it takes to get to where we need to go, then by all means do it.

One of the big problems we've had is the alignment between the various levels of government in housing policy. That seems to be finally coming together now with actions like the announcement on DCs and HST and so on. I realize that is not Build Canada Homes, but Build Canada Homes seems to be the focal point or the device that's being used to try to pull these things together.

Of course, the secret in all of this—and I know you know this—is in the implementation. We're very good—in fact, almost too good, and maybe it's being Canadian—at policy development, but we're behind on the implementation of a lot of these things. Time will tell, but I think that's where they really need to model things properly. They need the metrics and the action to get this done, to get where we need to go, because the ratio of housing cost to incomes has gone completely out of whack. It's not everywhere in Canada; it's different...but in key areas, it's important.

Would I have created another organization to do a job that existing ones should have done? Probably not, but I'm not going to argue with.... On that point in particular, we have to do whatever we need to do to get somewhere, because if we're going to attract the investment we need and create the well-being that people deserve, we need to get housing right.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

If I can, I'll jump in quickly, because we don't have much time.

You mentioned that we're very good at announcements and making policies, but not very good at the execution of those policies. You have about 30 seconds to tell me why.

[Richard Lyall]

Well, I think we're one of the most decentralized countries in the developed world, if not the most, and we've run into problems of technocratic challenges that require technocratic solutions. That requires an alignment between different levels of government that has not been readily available where the housing crisis is concerned. We have to get that right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Aitchison.

Ms. Desrochers, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses here and online for joining us in this conversation as we're trying to get this right with Build Canada Homes and solve the housing crisis.

We've been implementing the national housing strategy since 2017. We have had some really good successes. We've built hundreds of thousands of homes through the programs that were led by CMHC, yet we find ourselves here today, and too many people still cannot afford to buy or rent a place that is decent. That is primarily because the stock of affordable housing is not sufficient. Four per cent is about what we have. It's the lowest in the OECD, and we need to take bold action to focus on that.

With everything that's been said, maybe I'll start with you, Mr. Ross, and then I'll hear from the other witnesses.

Do you agree that the key focus should be to increase the stock of affordable housing? I will quote what Mr. Lyall just said, which is that we need to do whatever it is we need to do. Do you agree that creating an agency that is focusing solely on that, that has all of the financial tools at its disposal and works with industry to get us there, might be a good thing to try now that we've tried so many other things?

[Tim Ross]

Certainly, empowering a federal agency or Crown corporation with a focused mandate to deliver affordable housing has its merits. Already we are encouraged by some of the partnering discussions under way with Build Canada Homes to invest in the delivery of more affordable housing with greater speed and scale.

There are a couple of considerations that I think are important in ensuring that we get the implementation right. Whereas Build Canada Homes has a focus on new builds and the acquisition of affordable homes, it's really important to recognize that other programs are very important to the sustainability and growth of affordable housing in Canada, particularly the non-market housing sector. As we're in this period of transformation and we're seeing the wind-down and closure of national housing strategy programs—because they've committed their budgets much faster because costs have risen—greater clarity is needed for the preservation of existing community housing. Greater clarity is needed for the continuity of seed funding to support feasibility and predevelopment activities that are quite costly and burdensome for proponents. Very importantly, we must continue to ensure the housing security of low-income members living in community housing, whose rental assistance is set to expire in a matter of months.

As Build Canada Homes is focused on new builds and acquisition, it is very critical that the federal government consider and make more clear its direction in these program areas as well.

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Ross.

Go ahead, Mr. Lyall.