Canada isn’t living up to its construction capacity, according to a new report from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation .In a perpetually under supplied housing market, the narrative across Canada is that we need to “get shovels in the ground” and build –However, this isn’t exactly resulting in a flurry of action and activity.
Laberge highlights how, until the mid-2000s, housing starts were closely aligned with employment and gross domestic product in residential construction. The years since have seen increased investment in residential construction through both funding and labour, but the pace of construction did not keep up, the report notes.
CMHC’s estimate that the country’s housing starts could have reached nearly 400,000 in 2023 is about 70% higher than the total number of units started that year. CMHC said it used current industry employment levels and assumed past productivity levels could be achieved., which revealed that the ratio of housing starts to population differed dramatically across Canadian Census Metropolitan areas , by a factor of two or more.
Laberge points to CMHC’s 2022 municipal and land regulation survey, which revealed that Toronto and Vancouver had heightened land use and regulatory constraints, while Alberta had more flexible regulation. With that said, Laberge says that British Columbia has since created flexibilities in regulations to be implemented by municipalities, something that signals “a clear desire for improvement.”. The program is intended to fund municipal regulatory change to accelerate housing construction.
“Consolidation may help generate economies of scale, making the math work better to build affordable housing and enabling some production savings to be passed on to Canadians,” writes Laberge. “For years, the residential construction industry pointed to regulation as the most significant constraint to building more houses. Evidence shows that progress can indeed be made on that front, and all levels of government are adapting, but more must be done.
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