Human Resources Committee on June 4th, 2026

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.

Ms. Keesmaat, you talked about how Build Canada Homes should be able to help.

Have you seen any results so far from Build Canada Homes in the Toronto area?

[Jennifer Keesmaat]

My understanding is that Build Canada Homes is on the cusp of receiving royal assent. Build Canada Homes is deeply embedded in a process of evaluating projects that are shovel-ready, have a high percentage of being affordable or are non-market housing. In keeping with some of my earlier comments, we can anticipate those outcomes. It would be premature to actually see them in the landscape of any city at this point.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

The reason I ask is that the Government of Canada said over a year ago that it was going to move at unimaginable speeds. As you have just clarified, this big, grandiose project it has come forward with still hasn't passed royal assent and still isn't in place. People are stuck in the space, because they're not quite sure what CMHC is doing right now. They're not quite sure when Build Canada Homes is actually going to be operational. They're kind of stuck in this limbo space where they're waiting for the government to actually move, so they can figure out how to move.

That has an impact, would you not agree?

[Jennifer Keesmaat]

I would agree. I think we are on the cusp of a massive transition in a variety of different ways, including around the role that government plays. I think we need to have very clear policy parameters around the objectives of the government, and then we need to stick to the plan and figure out how to measure very clearly the connection between the level of investment and the outcomes that are being achieved in homebuilding.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Collins-Williams, do you have anything to add on that?

[Mike Collins-Williams]

The development of more non-market homes is indeed important, but it's critical that it be done in parallel with a major effort beyond Build Canada Homes to address housing affordability, as the federal government has committed to doubling housing starts in market-rate housing, which is where 95% of Canadians actually live.

I believe that the path forward is not for the government to step into the role of the builder but to enable those who already do this work every day to do it better, faster and at greater scale. You know, there's certainly—

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Have you seen any change in the speed that government has worked at since the government promised a year ago that it was going to move at unimaginable speeds?

[Mike Collins-Williams]

For better or for worse, this sector is burdened by not moving at unimaginable speeds. I think there's cautious optimism that Build Canada Homes has a role to play. As I said, approximately 95% of Canadians live in market housing, so it is not going to be a panacea, no matter how successful it is.

I do know that a number of our members in the private sector have engaged with Build Canada Homes on potential projects, and I'm hopeful that in the months ahead there will be some positive announcements for projects to move forward. Again, Build Canada Homes cannot become the sole focus of federal policy.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you. I really appreciate that.

One of the interesting pieces.... I'm from Fort McMurray. For years, Fort McMurray was booming, and houses were being built every single day. We've seen very little housing built for the last decade. That's partly in relationship with the fact that the federal government said that we should transition away from all oil and gas. That had a real impact, not just on our community but on the entire space of homebuilding. Now we're sitting in a space where we don't have a lot of those skilled trades. What is the impact of the government's making policy decisions and losing those skilled trades from different regions?

Mr. Collins-Williams, go ahead.

[Mike Collins-Williams]

I can't speak to Fort McMurray specifically, but I can speak more broadly to concerns around the skilled trades.

My biggest fear with the current downturn we are in today is that there are job losses in the sector. In the long run, we need more skilled trades to double the number of housing starts. As jobs are being lost in the short term and as people are leaving this sector in this industry, my concern is that in the long run we are going to have a skilled trades shortage like we've never seen before.

Young people are being educated in learning a trade, but they're coming out of school and are not necessarily able to find gainful employment in the industry, so they're looking elsewhere. You have people mid-career who, if they lose their job and are in their forties or fifties, are getting retrained and looking for a job in another sector. When the residential construction industry actually turns things around, hopefully in the next year or two, those people aren't necessarily coming back. Then you have the journeymen and women, who are the most experienced and are in the industry teaching the younger folks. If they're losing a job in their late fifties or early sixties, they're not coming back. We are potentially in a very difficult situation in the long run.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Rosemarie Falk]

Thank you very much, Mr. Collins-Williams.

Next up, we have MP Church for five minutes, please.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Mr. Collins-Williams, let me maybe just pick up a bit on those comments. As you're aware, in the spring economic update, the government actually just announced a major transformation of the way we do skills, trades, training, recruitment and retention in the country, with an effort to recruit, train and hire up to 100,000 skilled trades workers over the next five years. I think we agree with you that there's definitely a workforce need, and if we're going to achieve the kinds of building objectives we have set out in housing and more broadly, we absolutely need those skilled trades workers.

I've even been hearing quite a bit about how, in training programs, there have been successful new programs that are training up construction workers on modular homes, new building methods and new sustainable materials. Are you seeing any of that in the industry as well? Do you have any advice for us in terms of how we go about recruiting more skilled trades workers to this field?

[Mike Collins-Williams]

I'm certainly excited by a number of the recent announcements and programs at the federal level. In Ontario, where I'm from, the provincial government has also had a strong focus on the next generation of skilled trades.

There are a lot of really positive things happening in skilled trades training. The concern we have is that, as we're going through the most significant downturn in the industry in a generation, perhaps even worse than the 1990s downturn, we are losing well-paying, good jobs in the sector. If this persists over the long term, no matter what the government is doing in terms of training, if the jobs aren't available in that short- to medium-term period, we may have young folks, well-trained young folks, leaving the industry and potentially not coming back.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Thanks very much.

Ms. Keesmaat, first of all, I'm delighted to see you here. You're a fellow resident of Toronto—St. Paul's. Thank you for appearing before the committee today.

You talked a bit about the impact that the housing accelerator fund, the ACLP and MLI Select are having on the industry. Can you talk a bit more, given your lengthy experience, on what you've seen as the change in the federal approach to housing in the last number of years and the expansion and development of some of these programs, which are moving the federal government back into the housing space? Have you seen a change?

[Jennifer Keesmaat]

In my response, I can connect this to your previous question as well.

Mike Collins-Williams has spoken about the risk that, as we are in this generational downturn, skilled workers are leaving the industry and this is going to create a legacy five to 10 years from now, almost even immediately with respect to unemployment. This is absolutely true. It's the change in the government's approach to housing delivery through Build Canada Homes that can potentially mitigate that risk.

Build Canada Homes, by moving very quickly, building on government-owned land and partnering with the industry, which has shovel-ready projects, can be catalytic in ensuring that we continue to build. This is a golden opportunity as a country, quite frankly, to be focusing on building non-market and co-operative housing, something that we are woefully behind on in the G7 in terms of the percentage of our overall housing units that are non-market housing or co-operative housing.

This is a golden opportunity to keep our trades, our skilled trades, working and to keep our construction industry intact using the new role of Build Canada Homes to act very quickly in order to keep building happening while the economics of private sector projects often are simply not viable.

I just want to say that some of those not viable shovel-ready private sector projects are just not viable because there was too much paid for the land, so there's a certain amount of speculation that takes place that some of those projects just won't advance, but when you're talking about a government role on government land to build non-market housing, nothing could be more important and more critical for our skilled trades.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Rosemarie Falk]

Thank you very much, Ms. Church.

I'd like to thank both of our witnesses for taking the time to be here today and sharing their expertise with the committee.

With that being said, we will suspend for the next panel.

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

Committee members, welcome back. We are on the second hour of today's meeting.

Again, for the benefit of the witnesses appearing in this hour, there are a couple of points.

You have the option to participate in today's meeting in the official language of your choice. Please click on the globe icon at the bottom of your Surface and choose the language in which you wish to participate. If there is an interruption in translation, get my attention, and we'll suspend while it is corrected.

As well, please direct all questions and comments through the chair and wait until I recognize you.

I would like to welcome the witnesses.

We had one who did not meet the sound test and will be scheduled later, but with us this morning, from the Association des professionnels de la construction et de l'habitation du Québec are Isabelle Demers, vice-president, strategic development, and David Goulet, economic director; and from the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, Richard Lyall, president.

Whoever is going to give the opening comments from Association des professionnels, you have five minutes.

[Isabelle Demers, Vice-President, Strategic Development, Public Affairs and Innovation, Association des professionnels de la construction et de l'habitation du Québec]

Thank you very much. I think this is my cue.

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for inviting us to discuss a challenge that's affecting millions of Canadians: the housing crisis.

My name is Isabelle Demers. I'm the vice-president of strategic development, public affairs and innovation with the Association des professionnels de la construction et de l'habitation du Québec, or APCHQ. With me is David Goulet, our economic director.

Founded in 1961, the APCHQ represents and supports more than 28,000 businesses in Quebec's residential construction and renovation industry. That probably makes it the largest association of its kind in Canada. It's also a voluntary membership association that encompasses the entire construction sector.

We are here because of the historic crisis affecting the entire country, as we all know. We are facing the first generation since 1971 that may not have access to home ownership. This is happening while the retirement wealth gap between homeowners and renters is five to one. The risk of individual and collective impoverishment should concern all legislators.

Evidently, this comes on top of increased pressure on the affordable rental market, rising rents, costs and mortgages, and stagnating housing starts, while housing needs persist.

According to CMHC, Quebec alone will need to build one million new homes by 2035 to restore affordability, which means doubling annual housing starts.

The urgency of the situation calls for coordinated and coherent action among all stakeholders and levels of government.

The APCHQ identifies three priority areas for action.

The first is to increase supply in all its forms. This requires support for smaller businesses and a degree of industrialization of construction processes. Simplification is also needed. The accumulation of regulations, processes and programs must be reviewed. The lack of harmonization in the building codes and requirements that vary from one municipality to another all hinder the scaling up of residential projects.

On the program side, for example, the APH select program must be updated. Its criteria are still based on 2019 data. Transparent criteria must be established for CMHC's financial capacity review to large borrowers, and massive investment in water infrastructure must continue. Building is not enough. Connection to services must follow. Another example is that the affordability definition changes from one program or organization to another. This is very confusing for builders.

Second, we need to promote home ownership, because renting or owning should be a matter of choice, which is not the case at the moment. The GST relief is an excellent step in the right direction, but it helps only with the purchase of new property. We recommend relaunching the CMHC first-time homebuyer incentive with enhanced eligibility criteria, and making the HBP and the FHSA intergenerational programs.

Third, we need to maintain and improve the existing housing stock through renovation. The most affordable building is the one that already exists, yet there are currently no real meaningful incentives to renovate. The benefit of renovation, when tied to energy efficiency gains, becomes a real win-win-win situation. Therefore, programs that motivate action in the short term and at scale must be strengthened.

In closing, members of the committee, the housing crisis is certainly a collective challenge that demands vision and consistent, concerted action by all orders of government and industry stakeholders. The APCHQ will continue to be an active collaborator in building a future in which everyone has access to affordable, sustainable, high-quality housing.

Thank you. My colleague and I are available to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Demers.

We'll now go to Mr. Lyall for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair and members, for the opportunity to appear.

My name is Richard Lyall. I am from RESCON. Our members build the bulk of the housing in Ontario and in other parts of Canada and the United States.

I'll be direct with the committee, because the numbers are direct. To restore affordability, the CMHC has told us that this country needs roughly 3.5 million additional homes by 2030. That's over and above what we are already on track to build. The federal government's own target is 500,000 housing starts annually by 2035. We're not even close. In 2025 Canada recorded approximately 259,000 housing starts. CMHC's own projections show starts falling to 247,000 this year, 223,000 in 2027, and 216,000 in 2028, moving in the wrong direction at precisely the moment we need to nearly double output.

Ontario tells the same story. The province pledged 1.5 million homes by 2031, with an annual benchmark of 125,000 starts. In 2025 Ontario delivered just 86,000 starts against that 285,000-unit target. The first quarter of that year produced approximately 12,700 starts, the lowest quarterly output since the 2008 financial crisis. New home sales in the greater Toronto area collapsed to 5,300 units for the entire year.

The honest answer to the committee's central question about starts relative to the targets and how far off we are is that we are running at roughly half the pace required nationally. In Ontario the gap is wider still.

Federal programs have done useful work. The housing accelerator fund has supported municipal zoning reform and contributed to more than 330,000 building permits in participating communities. The apartment construction loan program has committed over $29 billion and supported 74,000 purpose-built rental units. The GST rebate on new rentals has improved project economics at the margin. However, permits are not starts, and starts are not completions. A permit issued in a market where projects do not pencil out becomes a file in a drawer, not a home for a family.

The core problem is that federal programs are often operating in isolation from provincial and municipal cost structures that actually determine whether a shovel goes in the ground. A typical new home in the greater Toronto area carries roughly $200,000 in government-imposed taxes, fees and development charges, a number that has roughly doubled over the past decade. No federal incentive program, at current scale, offsets that.

I would respectfully offer the committee four areas where federal action, in alignment with provinces and municipalities, would actually move starts.

First, tie the federal infrastructure and housing transfers to development charge reform. The new Canada–Ontario development charge reduction program announced this week is a constructive step. It needs to become a template, not the exception.

Second, make the HST removal on new housing largely permanent. Tax policy is the fastest federal lever available.

Third, modernize how we measure and approve. CMHC should track excavations, as the United States and Australia do, so that we have a real-time indicator rather than waiting for foundations to meet grade. The federal government should accelerate digital permitting initiatives like One Ontario, for example, a single, interoperable e-permitting standard that would compress timelines by months.

Fourth, give Build Canada Homes measurable accountability through a defined annual contribution to starts, published KPIs and clear reporting to this committee. Without that, it risks becoming another announcement rather than another 100,000 homes. Modern methods of construction aren't anything new, but that's a separate topic.

Federal money is necessary, but federal money alone will not build homes. What will build homes is federal-provincial-municipal alignment on costs, approvals, taxes and accountability. Ontario builders are ready to deliver. The capacity exists. The demand exists. What we need is a policy environment, and implementation, in which projects can move from permit to start to completion. That requires every order of government pulling in the same direction.

I look forward to your questions. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Lyall.

We'll begin the first six-minute round with Mr. Aitchison.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses. I appreciate your testimony today.

I'm going to start with Mr. Lyall.

You made me think about something as you were finishing your comments, which you raced through, by the way, I would point out. You had a lot to share, and you got through it all, which is impressive.

You talked a lot about the importance of federal, provincial and municipal governments all being in alignment, and the fact that the federal government really should be using its fiscal leverage to ensure that we're reducing process times, fees and charges—basically the burden of government on the construction of new homes—which I am in complete agreement with.

I'm wondering if you can speak, though, to the scale of the problem. I think it's safe to say we all agree that housing starts are an important tool, but they're not the only tool, the only indicator. It's far more complex than that, but on the accumulation of delay, charges and fees, can you speak a bit to how that happened?

Obviously, after the Second World War, we built very fast, and the federal government was a key player in that. They got the job done in 10 years. We solved the housing crisis, yet it seems to me that now it's getting worse. Can you speak to the accumulation of process, delay and fees?

[Richard Lyall]

Absolutely, and it's a great question.

The thing that happened, and it's a little...well, I don't want to say insidious, because that speaks of mal-intent. What happened was that no one was really paying attention to the overall picture, the overall housing environment, and looking at the connections with health care, education, early childhood development and things like that, which it affects. Housing is a fundamental need, like food and security. It's different in economic terms. It's not a want, although it is a want for some people.

The big problem is that the process became more complex. Regulations grew. No one was looking at how everything came together. You had different levels of government in our wonderfully decentralized country, the most decentralized in the developed world, with multiple agencies and government bodies—we counted 45 government entities that are involved in the approvals process—and it became a mess.

Of course, buildings became more complex—we're building greener and trying to reduce carbon and things like that as best we can—and we're doing a pretty good job on that, I would say, but it was just that no one was at the helm. It was like you had a boat without a bridge.

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

You got into a couple of very interesting topics there. Clearly, it's not just one particular level of government that has accumulated the process. Obviously, for a lot of the efficiency requirements and stuff, that has been more of a federal push, and much of that has been good. I'm sure some of it has not been good, but in terms of that stuff, can you speak to how much some of these suggested changes to code at the federal level have added to the cost of a home?