Human Resources Committee on May 25th, 2026

[Sean Baird]

It's really important to look at the broader impacts economically across the entire sector. It's true that housing starts drive significant efforts in construction, economic returns and taxation, but it's also true that having housing stability for the vast majority of Canadians drives significant improvements economically for the entire nation.

There's good research being done right now that's going to show how continuing to invest in affordable housing for all Canadians will result in lower costs in health care and in our justice system. There are knock-on effects that affect the economy much more broadly. Labour mobility is an example as well. These are all areas that, traditionally, have been somewhat ignored when you look at government-based investments in non-market housing, but they're very real and they're very measurable.

It's true that both matter. We can make investments in non-market housing and market housing. We can generate economic activity through that construction work. We can also provide for more housing stability that leads to better economic outcomes for all Canadians.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Saini.

Ms. Larouche, you may go ahead for two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, I want to thank the witnesses for contributing to this very enlightening study.

The Larouches were masons. The Poiriers, on my mother's side, are carpenters. Many of my family members currently work in construction, so that's often the topic of conversation when we get together for family dinners on Sundays.

I'm going to turn to you, Mr. Brooks, because the real estate sector often calls for more financial incentives and less regulation. However, despite existing federal programs, housing is still unaffordable for many in Quebec.

How do you explain that gap between investments and real results?

[Michael Brooks]

That's a very difficult question to answer with respect to Quebec alone. Housing is very expensive for Quebeckers. It's interesting that when we looked at the research from the CMHC on development charges, in Montreal and, in fact, in many Quebec municipalities, they were very low relative to British Columbia and Ontario, so that's not a condition that I would point to as a cause of high house prices in Quebec.

We have many construction companies and developers from Quebec as part of our membership that invest in Quebec regularly. I don't know why it's that way in Quebec, unless it has to do with the income side of things.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that some seniors don't have enough income.

Mr. Jones brought up the Australian model, but many municipalities and community groups have said that real estate speculation is contributing to higher prices.

Quickly, in 30 seconds, can you tell me what role the federal government should play in limiting that market pressure?

[Michael Brooks]

I don't think anybody is speculating now. It's risky. When you buy an asset now with the expectation that it will be worth more three or four years from now...that's a gamble I would not be taking. It was perhaps a gamble that some condo investors took in 2020, 2021 and 2022, but it has been a disaster for many of those investors that bought new condos at $1,400 per square foot or $1,200 per square foot and now find they're worth $800 or $600 per square foot.

I don't think there are many speculators in the market anymore.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Larouche.

We have Madame Falk for five minutes.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank each of the witnesses for coming and sharing their knowledge and experience on this.

Mr. Jones, I'd like to follow up on something you said in one of your responses to MP Reynolds about building code changes. It was disturbing to hear that, due to these building code changes, there is an impact on importing building materials from Europe. Can you expand on that?

[Brad Jones]

Sure. It's predominantly related to ever-increasing sustainability targets. There is a nuance in that I am in Vancouver, where we're generally at the upper end of that spectrum of adopting sustainability-focused building codes. However, at the upper end of those code requirements, we are getting into window and door systems and cladding systems that are being imported. They're predominantly Belgian and German window systems that are super high performing.

I think an unintended consequence of our code has been that we have moved away from more “conventional” materials used to build homes across North America and have moved into highly specialized assemblies and systems that are not manufactured in Canada or the U.S. They are being imported, in many cases, from across the world.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

Can you speak to the efficiency or the effectiveness of these products? Is there a long-term advantage to having these as opposed to something made in Canada, or even in North America?

[Brad Jones]

Yes, at a high level, it would be higher performing. The payback period on each of these would be quite specific. However, depending on what it is, we have seen that the payback period on these really high-performing buildings, from a sustainability perspective, can be in the 10-plus-year range in energy savings to pay off that capital.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

Wow. Do you think these products could be produced in Canada or the United States—in North America? Why are they specific to Europe?

[Brad Jones]

It's the result of how policy was developed. I'm not a policy-maker, but my observation is that there's been a pattern of many going to European countries, particularly Scandinavian countries, and liking what they see there, from a sustainability and code perspective. They then build policies around that and target that type of product. Since it's been in those markets—and it's being produced for those markets—I think that, in some cases, the local suppliers are catching up. I would say, in our market, they are to an extent.

These are, in extreme cases, very highly specialized assemblies with quite small markets. When you have an area such as the Lower Mainland of B.C., with very specific code requirements above anywhere else in the country, it's a really small part of the construction supply market on a national scale and then even further on a North American and global scale. There isn't the capacity for the manufacturing industry to make products specifically for small subsets of the Canadian housing market.

That would be my slightly informed response.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

I think you said that these building codes are sometimes changing with every building cycle. Is that correct?

[Brad Jones]

I believe the national building code changes on a five-year cycle, and then the provincial codes follow that. We have a nuance in British Columbia, in which there's a provincial energy step code by which every municipality gets to choose which step they adopt and when they adopt it. Just for our business that focuses on the Lower Mainland, there are 21 different versions of that stack of codes to build housing today. You can imagine the inefficiency this creates.

As I said, we've done the work. We have looked at buildings that we built over the last 10 years. Twice, we have built buildings under the same set of codes.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

Wow, that's crazy. It sounds like additional red tape, inconsistency and unpredictability, as well, because it's harder to predict what you need to do if things are changing so quickly.

[Brad Jones]

It's changing so quickly that, in project one, you've installed the new energy-efficient heat pumps, ventilators and all the different things the code requires, but before you've finished that project and tested out all those systems, they've been banned by the next code. You're installing something new before you know how the last thing performed. That's how quickly it's changing.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Falk.

To conclude, we have Madame Gladu for five minutes.

[Marilyn Gladu, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I'm going to start with Mr. Baird. Most people, when they talk about affordable housing, say that it's something Canadians can afford with less than 30% of their income. I'm interested in your definition of “deeply affordable housing”. Is it free? Is it geared to income? Is it size-based? How do you define that?

[Sean Baird]

Thank you for the question.

No, it's certainly not free. We operate largely on a rent-geared-to-income basis.

You could debate whether we have a housing affordability issue in this country or an income issue in this country, but the reality is that 30% of someone's income is what we consider to be an affordable range. However, remember that we're serving the lowest-income earners in the country, so when I say 30% of income, I'm talking about $400 to $500 per month. This is the average rent we receive.

Historically, we always focused on providing housing to what we consider to be the lowest 20% of income earners in the city. That's true, I think, for most affordable housing providers across the country. Today, however, it's actually the bottom 40% to 50% of income earners who would theoretically qualify for subsidized housing such as we offer. Obviously, there's nowhere near enough supply to do that; it just doesn't meet the needs in the same way that it did historically.

[Marilyn Gladu, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

That's excellent. Thank you.

The next thing I want to do is recap what I think I heard about KPIs. I think I heard that housing starts aren't the whole story and that there are things we should add to that. We should be looking at the sales. We might also even be looking at pre-sales, the number of forced sales, the number of preserved houses and the number of Canadians who can afford the house—with less than 30% of their income.

Did I miss anything in that cornucopia of KPIs?

[Michael Brooks]

You picked the for-sale housing ones. On the rental side of things, you might also pick CMHC loans. That's a leading indicator of what's getting built because it's almost the first thing you apply for—an ACLP construction loan. That would be before the start, so add that to your list.

[Marilyn Gladu, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Excellent.

Is there anything from Mr. Baird or Mr. Jones?

[Sean Baird]

From an ultimate outcome perspective, what we want is affordability, so we need to find a way to properly track it. There's a wide variety of ways to lead towards that.

Brad gave a number of different measures of activity in the pipeline that I think would be excellent for tracking volume. Supply will lead to improvements overall, but we need to differentiate that according to different income classes as well, to make sure that we're meeting the affordability targets at a variety of different levels.