NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.), her party’s housing critic, told The Hill Times that Build Canada Homes has no minimum requirements for affordability in its projects, and that only the six sites that the government has announced will achieve affordability.
“Without setting specific targets at Build Canada Homes, there is no guarantee of affordability in future projects. According to CMHC [the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation], to retain housing affordability at 2019 levels, 430,000 to 480,000 new housing units need to be built annually over the next decade,” said Kwan in an emailed statement on Jan. 22. “CMHC will be cut by $860-million per year according to the Parliamentary Budget Office. The government should commit to increasing Canada’s share of non-market housing to a target of 20 per cent nationally to make truly affordable housing available to all. The Liberal and Conservative approach of relying on the private market has consistently failed to bring down costs. Build Canada Homes is no different.”
The Hill Times reached out to Robertson to ask about housing and measures to address the housing crisis, including Build Canada Homes and Bill C-4, but did not receive a response by press time.
Kwan said she and Robertson “get along personally, but that’s irrelevant to the housing crisis that Canadians face from coast to coast to coast.”
“Build Canada Homes was supposed to signal a ‘new era’ of federal action. But the PBO shows it will produce only 26,000 units over five years—a 2.1 per cent bump in completions when we need transformative investment. The prime minister talks about doubling housing construction, but the PBO is clear: there is no roadmap, no strategy, no coherent plan to deliver it,” she said in the email. “We need real federal leadership that takes a continuum-of-housing approach—sustained public investment, non-market housing at scale, and a commitment to treating housing as a human right, not a speculative asset.”
