Human Resources Committee on June 8th, 2026

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

I call this meeting to order.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to meeting number 41 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Pursuant to the motion adopted on Thursday, February 5, 2026, the committee is meeting on housing starts in relation to federal programs.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders of the House. Members are appearing virtually by Zoom, as well as in the room.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you all to please silence your devices, as well as to refrain from tapping the booms on the mics in front of you. This is for the protection of our interpreters.

You have the option to participate in the official language of your choice. Those in the room, please select the correct channel using the earpiece. Those appearing virtually, click on the globe icon at the bottom of your Surface. Choose the official language of your choice. If there is an interruption in interpretation, please get my attention. We'll suspend while it is being corrected.

As well, please direct all questions through me, the chair, and wait until I recognize you by name before proceeding.

Today, we have one panel for the full duration of the meeting. From the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, we have Coleen Volk, president and chief executive officer, and Mathieu Laberge, chief economist and senior vice-president, housing insights.

Ms. Volk, you have five minutes or less for your opening statement.

[Coleen Volk, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation]

Thanks for the invitation to discuss the relationship between housing starts and federal programs in Canada.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, has a unique, and perhaps crucial, perspective here. We have a national view—operating in all regions of the country—and we are at arm's length from the government. We also have a market intelligence network of analysts in most major markets of the country.

We were previously tasked with delivering a selection of federal programs. Today, Build Canada Homes is the lead on creating non-market housing, while we are focused mainly on market housing, which is home to 95% of Canadians.

All this being given, the pace of housing starts and the balance of supply are central to our mandate. The latest housing data point to a continued loss of momentum in housing construction, broadly in line with CMHC's housing market outlook. While actual starts increased compared to a year ago, this reflects the exceptionally low level of construction activity in the first quarter of last year.

Falling condo pre-sales and tightening financial conditions are threatening the future supply of ownership-oriented housing, particularly in Toronto and Vancouver, and building permit data suggests that the high number of rental starts we've seen in most major cities is likely to dry up in the next few years as well. Construction timelines can span years, so a slowdown today sets the stage for future supply constraints. That's a big concern, because our analysis is seeing a lot of suppressed demand, with many households waiting on the sidelines for conditions to improve before making a move.

We need the pipeline of housing to keep flowing so that it's there when the demand comes back online. CMHC's financing products, such as mortgage loan insurance and the apartment construction loan program, are helping to keep that pipeline flowing. Last year, our mortgage loan insurance products facilitated the financing of more than 360,000 homes. More than 30% of these were new units. Many developers have told us that without these products, their projects would not have been built.

Meanwhile, in 2025, we guaranteed more than $165 billion of mortgage-backed securities and $60 billion of Canada mortgage bonds. These support continued mortgage lending so that Canadians can buy homes and home builders can build them. With Build Canada Homes now here to focus on affordable housing, CMHC has the opportunity to focus in the direction of supporting the market side, where the vast majority of building takes place.

I'll close by saying that while I know this committee study is specifically looking at housing starts, that's not the only metric we're tracking. Starts measure the extent of current housing construction activity, and for that, they're essential, because until the moment it starts, a project could be abandoned, changed or delayed. However, other metrics are useful to indicate other aspects of the market. For example, the housing accelerator fund, which helps municipalities clear barriers to construction, measures the number of permits issued. This is because municipalities have control over permits. In the fund's first year, local governments that received funding issued 160,000 residential building permits, 22,000 more than expected. Housing permits generally lead starts by between six and 15 months, so they give a sense of where we're going and the mood in the construction sector.

In addition to sharing permit numbers, we're releasing new data on the time it takes to move from a building permit to a housing start. Through our modernizing housing data initiative, CMHC also reports on housing completions for all urban centres and absorptions for centres with more than 50,000 people. This includes data on homes that are occupied upon completion, homes that are unoccupied and prices for both.

We're also sharing clear, comparable information on development charges across 40 municipalities in B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec to clarify their impact on housing costs. With all this, we're moving beyond just housing starts to give a fuller picture of the development process.

Thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you today. I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Volk.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Volk and Mr. Laberge, for being here. I appreciate it.

This is about housing starts. Mercifully, we've actually been talking a little more broadly about housing and the health of the housing sector in this study, which is good, because a study of housing starts alone would be pretty simplistic. You did speak about that in your opening remarks, but I wonder if you could elaborate a little more on why quoting housing starts alone doesn't really tell the full picture. What's missing from a housing starts analysis?

[Coleen Volk]

That's a great question.

What's missing is sentiment.

Housing starts are a leading indicator of completions. Housing starts measure when the foundation is poured. That's a pretty good indicator that the unit is going to be completed. There's a high correlation between starts and completions, and housing starts are the earlier indicator of that. However, they're not the earliest indicator of sentiment.

At a time like this, when we're hearing on the ground that sentiment is souring, that's an important time to have an indicator that's a little earlier than that. That's why we're looking at permits, because permits happen earlier in a process—you need your permits months or years before you actually get to the point of a housing start.

That's a good indication of sentiment. We're actively looking at increasing our analysis of that.

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

Thank you for that.

Let's go a bit deeper. Permits are only part of the picture as well. It's entirely possible for a municipality—I know this, I was a mayor—to issue a permit, but then circumstances change, the permit is never executed and the building is never built.

It's also completely conceivable.... There are jurisdictions, like the City of Toronto, for example, that have thousands of units that are approved on the books, ready to go, but they aren't being built.

Help me and the committee understand a little more about the confidence required in the market, how changes in financing and changes in what's going on with lending rates and stuff can affect that dramatically as well.

[Coleen Volk]

Absolutely. A company can apply for a permit. There's a cost associated with this, so they usually do it with an intent to proceed, but it is a while before they get to building.

In that time, a lot of things can happen. Their construction costs can go up. The interest rates can go up. They may face some local opposition. There may be different issues that cause them not to get to the point of a housing start.

A permit is an indicator. It's not perfectly correlated with a housing start, because ultimately, some things may get derailed before they get to a housing start.

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

This may be your turn, Mr. Laberge.

Does the CMHC have any suggestions for the Canadian housing market—recognizing that it's not just one market; it varies across the country—for creating some more stability in the system that would...? There are peaks and valleys and shocks that happen. Do you have any suggestions for how we create some more stability in that system, from intent to completion?

[Mathieu Laberge, Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President, Housing Insights, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation]

What's really important in terms of bringing that stability is to have foresight about what's coming down the road. To have good foresight, you need to map out the full continuum of activity, from permits or even before—working on pre-sales and building intent for the rental market—all the way up to completion and absorption into the market.

Right now, we have a pretty good picture from start to absorption. With building permits and work with other agencies, such as Statistics Canada, we're arriving at that.

As for your earlier point, we're now also releasing the time duration between a permit and a start, which is a very good indication of what's happening between the two. If it gets longer, it's probably because the market is under a bit more strain.

Now we're trying to add to that, to go even earlier in the process, working with industry and building the industry association to acquire pre-sale data and their rental market building intention equivalent. This is in order to have the earliest point possible, not only to map out the mood but also to provide the information early enough so that the industry can adjust and have smoother cycles.

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

Okay. We're quickly running out of time on this first round, but I wanted, if I could, to go back to the report you wrote in response to the effort to reduce development charges. I'll give myself a little plug here—it's something the Conservatives have been talking about for a long time, and we're starting to see some progress there.

In that report, as it relates to your tracking and following of the data, and making sure that we have consistent data, you indicate that inconsistent and different types of information collection and data collection by individual municipalities makes that more complex. Can you speak a bit to how you're trying to address that?

[Mathieu Laberge]

When we started to collect the data—which was at about this point last year—we noted that there was a lot of different information reported, different angles to look at the data and different ways of reporting across all municipalities. There was no one standard way of doing it, essentially.

What we've been attempting to do—we started with 30 municipalities, back in December, and we expanded to 40 a couple of days ago—is to format that data in a way that's comparable across all municipalities. In doing so, we're not only collecting the data; we're going back to municipalities to make sure that what we're reporting is accurate, and we don't release it until we get this accuracy.

The data tables we're releasing right now are comparable. They can be benchmarked across municipalities. Our intent is to keep expanding the number of municipalities we're covering and to provide more information to the public.

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

That's excellent. Okay. Thank you.

I think I'm out of time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Aitchison.

Mr. Villeneuve, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Louis Villeneuve, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Laberge, we've heard various points of view over the course of the study on the best way to define housing starts. Can you explain the logic behind CMHC's approach and then give us your opinion on other methods of measuring housing starts?

[Mathieu Laberge]

In fact, the way we measure the number of housing starts right now is based on the spread footing, or the basic foundation being poured.

Why are we doing this? It's because, once the foundation has been poured, we have clear confirmation that a building will indeed be built there and that it will follow the established plan for the residential units. It's also because, as long as the project isn't at the excavation stage, it could still be revised or the land use could change.

Generally, once the foundation is poured, 99% of the units are built and delivered to the market. So this is a stage where we really have a high degree of certainty that the units promised in the building permit will actually become housing comprising the planned number and size of units.

There are also other ways to measure housing starts. For example, other companies collect data on excavation. With respect to excavation permits, not all municipalities issue them, and those that do don't have a uniform definition for them. When an excavation permit is issued, the number of units associated with the permit isn't specified. So the information available is really quite fragmented. It's also not comparable across municipalities.

What we're going to try to do in the survey I was referring to in response to the previous question is not only determine the number of pre-sales and their rental market equivalent, but also map a building's progression throughout the housing continuum, including the point at which we will define what constitutes an excavation. We will therefore be able to obtain comparable data in all participating urban centres, rather than data that varies widely from one urban centre to another.

[Louis Villeneuve, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

I'd like to circle back to Build Canada Homes for a moment.

How do you plan to coordinate your efforts with new entities like Build Canada Homes so that you can provide comprehensive housing data and help accelerate the construction of new housing?

[Mathieu Laberge]

In fact, we are already in contact with our colleagues at Build Canada Homes to gain access to data and be able to share it. We are, of course, contributing to the discussion and hope to gain access to the data.

That said, operational data is, by definition, often data intended for a very operational purpose. Standardizing this data requires a great deal of work if we want to use it for research purposes.

Requirements vary from one project to another. Therefore, the data doesn't necessarily have the consistency needed to be used directly. This applies to most government programs, whether in housing or other areas. Part of this work requires a lot of time and human resources. We must ensure that this data is comparable across projects and can be used to produce reports for research purposes.

[Louis Villeneuve, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

How are things going right now? Are you in contact with Build Canada Homes?

[Mathieu Laberge]

Absolutely, the two organizations are in contact. We're exchanging information and have been discussing this for several months now. We're actively working on this.

[Louis Villeneuve, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you.

CMHC also releases monthly reports on housing starts. You mentioned this earlier, right at the beginning. While these regular updates are helpful to Canadians, can you explain the limitations of a monthly analysis compared to a year-over-year comparison?

[Mathieu Laberge]

Monthly figures are extremely volatile, particularly for housing starts.

Seasonally adjusted annualized data is the correct way to compare monthly data from one month to the next. If I want to compare data from April to May or from May to June, I have to look at the seasonally adjusted annualized data. However, once the data is annualized, even a small shift in the number of actual housing starts results in a big change in the total number. The data is therefore quite volatile from month to month, which essentially undermines the need for a certain degree of stability in the data.

At CMHC, we've been advancing trend measurement of housing starts for several years. This provides a much clearer picture of the overall state of the market. It's more informative to look at the trend in housing starts than to look at month-to-month data, which varies greatly.

Now, let's talk about year-over-year data. For example, when we want to compare the data for April 2026 with that for April 2025 to see where we stand relative to the same period the previous year, what actually happens is that there's a baseline level.

For example, in April of last year—and there's a reason I'm citing this example—housing starts were relatively low compared to the historical average. Obviously, it doesn't take a very high figure in April 2026 to show growth. However, compared to the historical average, what we need to look at is whether growth is—

[Louis Villeneuve, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

I'm going to have to stop you there. My time is up.

Thank you very much, Mr. Laberge.

[Mathieu Laberge]

I really enjoy talking about this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve.

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

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank both witnesses, Ms. Volk and Mr. Laberge, very much for being with us today.

Housing is really all over the news right now. This past weekend, we saw an article reporting a record number of renovictions: These people fear for their future as tenants in their current housing.

There was also an open letter in the Granby Express that talked about a member of the community who is concerned about this issue. Yes, housing units will be built, but will they meet the needs of people in these communities? That's another question we're asking ourselves. There were several very interesting articles this past weekend about this.

My first question is this: Since 2017, how many housing units that have actually been built and occupied can be directly attributed to federal programs rather than to projects that would have been carried out without federal intervention?