Human Resources Committee on June 8th, 2026

[Mathieu Laberge]

The challenge here is that most of the research my team does is around market housing. When it gets into the policy evaluation, this is not something we're privy to or have foresight on, for that matter. We haven't had discussions around that topic.

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

Has there been any analysis done by your shop on if....? I mean, if 95% of housing in this country is, in fact, market housing, that would indicate, based on my simple math as I understand it, that 5% is non-market housing. If we're missing a certain percentage in market housing, how much are we missing in non-market housing?

There must be some analysis that gives us the data for all of these things. Honestly, they've come up with $11 billion as the capitalization for this thing. I'm a little worried that there's been no analysis done to suggest that this is an appropriate number.

[Mathieu Laberge]

There are really different drivers between market and non-market housing. They are like, as we say in French, vases communicants. If you increase the supply of non-market housing, a possible outcome that we haven't researched is that you may disincentivize people to go to the market side of things. There's a thin balance.

What we did look at—and we have a paper that's public on it—is the capacity of building overall, for the whole country, based on the resources that we have in the country right now.

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

It's safe to say that we need more affordable housing in this country, but would you also agree that we need all homes to be more affordable?

[Mathieu Laberge]

The way we approach that is.... We need a diversity of options for all households in Canada. When you think about housing, it's not.... Isolating housing from the broader context eliminates some trade-offs that are possible. I may rather have a bigger home on a bigger lot further away from downtown and commute every day, or I may value being closer to my work and not having to commute, but then I have a much smaller unit. Those trade-offs are really important.

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

I'm out of time, but I want to talk more about this one.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Aitchison.

We will now finish up with Ms. Desrochers for five minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Can we continue a bit on this? We're always talking about the 95% and the 5%. We know that one of the goals of Build Canada Homes.... There are some targets that will be established once we are able to become a full Crown corporation. After we vote on Bill C-20, I'm sure they will bring the targets as part of the departmental plan that they will be putting forward.

Can we talk about the goal of doubling the construction of affordable homes? Will it help reduce the pressure on housing costs, even for market housing?

[Mathieu Laberge]

There are two ways in which additional supply can help alleviate affordability issues. The first one is through what we call filtering. This is essentially creating more supply, and this also helps to move up the ladder of housing and free up more affordable units. Really, it's important to bring a diversity of different unit types so that people can move fluidly from one unit to another and more affordable homes are freed up. This process takes some time, but we are starting to see some elements of it at the upper end of the rental market. That's usually the initial stage of filtering. It takes several years to fully materialize through the whole continuum of housing, however.

The other way is that providing more supply helps income catch up with price growth. We oftentimes forget that affordability is not only about the price tag but also about the income to afford it. If you make house prices keep growing at a slower pace than income, or you boost income at a higher pace than house prices, then it catches up and naturally improves affordability over time, which is also a way that additional supply works.

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

Based on your data, can we say that we're moving in that direction? I know it might be a bit early to say whether that's the case or not, but the data shows that the cost of rent is starting to come down a bit and wages are starting to go up. The employment and unemployment rates are pretty stable.

[Mathieu Laberge]

We definitely see that the correlation between price and market conditions is looser than it was a few years ago. We advocate for more fluidity in the markets and a slower increase in rent and housing prices. We also see that incomes are, in fact, starting to catch up. What we see in our research is that we have the capacity to increase the housing supply even more with the resources we currently have. There have never been as many workers in the construction industry as in recent years. If we apply past productivity to the number of workers, we could reach much higher levels of housing starts. However, it will require structural changes, for example in terms of productivity or industry consolidation. That would mean there would be enough capital in the industry to invest in new technologies.

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

Do you think using modern construction methods could be useful?

[Mathieu Laberge]

That's one possibility among others, yes.

Developers have told us that even small changes in the use of technology, for example, better resource tracking and resource optimization, lead to fairly significant savings, to the tune of 10%.

Earlier, we talked about regulations. For example, building data modelling, a technology adopted in England since the end of the pandemic, has resulted in a significant reduction in administrative needs. There is a set of measures that can be taken in that area.

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

Basically, the policy to increase the supply of affordable housing is good news for the market. Is that correct?

[Mathieu Laberge]

Right now, any additional housing supply counts. It is important to maintain a diverse supply of housing units for all households. The issues of affordable housing, missing middle housing and markets are important.

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

I'll use the rest of my time to thank the witnesses for being here today. I also thank them for their important work. I see how important their work is every day when I meet with developers, tenants and non-profit organizations.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Madame Desrochers.

I believe it is the will of the committee to adjourn, but before we do I will remind the committee that we will be meeting on Thursday at the same time with the same study, homelessness and housing starts, as well as the Centennial Flame.

With that, I thank you all for attending.

We are adjourned.