Human Resources Committee on June 8th, 2026

[Coleen Volk]

I think I heard very clearly what the Prime Minister believes: that the Crown corporation is a creature of the government and has to do what the government would like to do. That's our role, and that's what we're doing.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

That's fair enough. Ma'am, I appreciate the precision of your answers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Volk and Mr. Laberge, thank you for being with us this afternoon. Thank you very much for all the work you and your teams are doing on the ground. We really appreciate it.

Last week, you released new data related to the potential impact of reducing development charges on housing starts in different parts of the country. I'll come back to all the caveats around the right data to measure afterward. Given everything we've just said, could you tell me a little more about that research, the conclusions and the impact it could have?

[Mathieu Laberge]

Absolutely.

This is the second round of data updates on development charges that CMHC began in December. Every time we do an update, we try to give a new perspective, since the data is new.

In December, we strictly used the calibration or comparison potential. This time around, we tried to assess different scenarios for reducing or even eliminating development charges. We have noticed that it doesn't have the same impact in all cities. Where development charges are particularly high and financial conditions are particularly tight, a significant reduction or elimination of development charges would have a major impact on project viability. We're talking about cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, where there would be an increase of around 10% in viable projects and a significant increase in housing starts. For example, if development charges were eliminated in Toronto, a third or a half of the supply deficit would now be filled in that market, as we estimated in our June 2025 report.

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

Thank you for that.

We'll just stay on housing starts for a minute.

We've had the conversation today, and we've had the conversation in previous committee meetings. If housing starts are not the right measure, why do we continue using them? Is there a plan to transition out of using that measure? It's causing a lot of anxiety, I would say.

[Coleen Volk]

It's actually a great measure. We stand behind the housing starts as a measure, but they're not a great measure of sentiment.

What's happening right now is that people are using housing starts as a measure of sentiment and saying there's nothing to worry about because housing starts are strong. That's not exactly the reality. The reality is that housing starts are strong now because sentiment was strong a few years ago.

However, housing starts are still a really important measure. They're highly correlated to completion. We have a history of data and a very important and factual trend line for that over many years, but the situation we find ourselves in today is very different from what we have found ourselves in during the previous decades. We have a very particular drop in sentiment that has not been captured there, so we need a different measure for that.

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

Thank you.

We talked about the link between CMHC and Build Canada Homes. Can you give us an example? I'm very familiar with the existing collaboration because I see it every day, but can you give us an example of a project in which...? How does that collaboration look when there's mixed housing and a program—for example, the ACLP—with some of the...?

I'll let you go ahead.

[Coleen Volk]

Sure.

This is a hypothetical. A proponent would come in with a project for ACLP, our apartment construction loan program, which has affordability goals. In order to access the program, the proponent has to be committing to a certain percentage of affordable rents, and this may work: We may be able to do a deal with them under the ACLP. However, with Build Canada Homes' assistance, they may get to a deeper level of affordability. Build Canada Homes could provide some extra subsidies or some other ways to make the math work better in the deal, in which case they can get more affordability out of the same deal.

We will partner together. We'll both be involved. We're not duplicating. We're not running two sets of back offices or anything. We'll just work together to make that deal happen and provide a better outcome than if CMHC had done it alone under the ACLP.

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

Do I still have...? Oh, it's one second.

Well, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Desrochers.

Next, I have Mr. Seeback for five minutes.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

You were talking about sentiment. Do you look at other variables, such as mortgage delinquencies, power of sale, rising household debt, rising HELOC and all those things? If you were to look at those things as they stand right now, would you suggest that sentiment is helpful for people wanting to buy houses, or would these be driving down sentiment?

[Coleen Volk]

I'll turn it over to Mathieu for something more technical, but I'll give you the high-level answer first.

For us, the strongest indicator of sentiment in the homeowner market is unemployment. The more unemployment there is, the less likely people are to want to buy a home. There's a correlation with arrears as well, in homeowners. That would be the high level.

Mathieu can probably give you a more fulsome answer.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I read that, anecdotally, missed payments, power of sale and foreclosures are up. I would guess that those are factors you put into whatever giant computer or AI you use to calculate sentiment.

[Mathieu Laberge]

There are three ways we try to measure sentiment. There's no such thing as a perfect measure. It's all about proxies, so to speak.

The variables you mentioned are some of those we look at, in terms of their evolution. For example, arrears have been increasing somewhat. This is very specific to some centres. Think about southwestern Ontario, Toronto and—somewhat—Vancouver. It's important to caveat this in terms of where they started. It was from a very low level. That's the type of current analysis we do. That's one way.

This also feeds—you're right—into the models, which we have a lot of. I won't get into geeky details, but that's another way.

I think the best way to get at market sentiment is through the network of analysts we have on the ground who speak to developers in every large city and ask them what their business is looking like, what they are doing right now and what they are forecasting for the future.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I get that part of it. I have conversations with builders in my riding, and I get where their sentiment is.

Do you consider what's happening with missed payments, increased foreclosures and other things to be driving down sentiment for buying new homes? Is there a comparable time in the Canadian timeline of the last 20 years when the numbers looked similar?

[Mathieu Laberge]

That's a good question.

You know, there is no great comparison to other times, because we're coming out of very specific economic conditions.

Back to your point, yes, one of the things we need to account for is that arrears, missed payments and all that are outcomes of what was decided a while ago. It's not a market sentiment of building activity. It's a market sentiment among current homeowners. That may impact downstream, but it's not current sentiment.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

If it were to impact downstream, is that a positive or a negative? It seems to me that it's negative.

[Mathieu Laberge]

It depends on which measure you're looking at.

You mentioned household debt. It's been elevated in Canada for several years, but we've still had cycles in the housing system. You have to look at the overall economic conditions.

Back to Coleen's point, unemployment remains a key driver of what's possible.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

It sounds as though it would be fascinating to see your models and how they work.

I know we're going to run out of time.

Quickly, do you ever look at the impediments to getting houses built at all levels and grade or rate them? For example, I often hear that it's at the municipal level that we have the most impediments. The Globe and Mail just wrote a very interesting article about the Squamish Nation's building near Vancouver. Without the impediment of municipal governments, it got a huge development done in four years.

Do you look at that, rank it and measure it against whatever the federal government is doing to try to improve that impediment? If so, what's your...?

[Mathieu Laberge]

I'd be happy to run through our models, quite honestly.

On the impediment.... We did an analysis, a couple of years ago, of municipal land use regulation surveys. We just ran a new analysis on it that was released a couple of weeks ago. It shows that an increase of 10% in regulatory burden leads to an increase of 14% in house prices, which, as you can imagine, dampens demand and slows activity on the market.

When you look a bit further, yes, the municipal level regulations are among.... When you think about delays to get permits, red tape.... It's part of the broader picture, obviously.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Do you rank it at all?

[Mathieu Laberge]

We do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Seeback.

You're over time, but that was an interesting exchange.

Mr. Saini, go ahead for five minutes.

[Gurbux Saini, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you to the witnesses.

In your opening remarks, you talked about the housing accelerator fund, which was started by the federal government. Later on, a couple of months ago, the federal and provincial governments did a deal in Ontario, trying to accomplish the same thing.

What is the difference between those two? Which is the most effective of the two systems?