THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL FINANCE
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, November 5, 2025
The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance met with videoconference this day at 6:47 p.m. [ET] to examine and report on federal programs and initiatives to support the creation of housing.
Senator Claude Carignan (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Good evening, honourable senators. I wish to welcome you, as well as the Canadians who are watching us on sencanada.ca.
My name is Claude Carignan, senator from Quebec, and chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. Now, I would like to ask my colleagues to introduce themselves.
Senator Forest: Good evening and welcome. Éric Forest from the Gulf division in Quebec.
[English]
Senator Pupatello: Hello. My name is Sandra Pupatello, and I am a senator from Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Dalphond: Good evening. Pierre Dalphond from the De Lorimier division in Quebec.
Senator Galvez: Good evening and welcome to our committee. Rosa Galvez, Quebec.
[English]
Senator Cardozo: Welcome. Andrew Cardozo, Ontario.
Senator Kingston: Joan Kingston, New Brunswick.
Senator Ross: Welcome. Krista Ross from New Brunswick.
Senator MacAdam: Jane MacAdam, Prince Edward Island.
Senator Marshall: I am Elizabeth Marshall, from Newfoundland and Labrador.
[Translation]
The Chair: Today, we continue our study on federal programs and initiatives to support the creation of housing.
For our first panel of witnesses today, we are pleased to welcome Blair Feltmate, Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo, who is appearing as an individual; and Debbie Douglas, Executive Director, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. Welcome to both of you. Thank you very much for accepting our invitation. We’ll start with four to five minutes of opening remarks per guest, and then we will go to questions. We will now hear opening remarks from Dr. Feltmate, followed by Ms. Douglas.
[English]
Blair Feltmate, Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo, as an individual: Thank you very much. I appreciate being here this evening.
In my opening remarks, I will be focussing on actions homeowners can take to protect their homes from flooding and wildfire. However, before turning to those corrective actions, I will present some facts that capture the impact of flooding and wildfire on Canada’s housing market, which in turn reinforces the importance of your work and your attention.
I have shared a graph with you, if you had a chance to look at it, that profiles insured catastrophic loss claims for Canada from 1983 to the present. You can see that for the period of 1983-2008, insured claims were in the zone of about $350 million per year across Canada, whereas from 2009 onward, payments averaged about $3 billion per year. What matters most on this figure is the shape of the curve. It’s bending upwards, driven primarily by flood and wildfire damage. In short, things are getting worse, faster.
To add more insight, a few facts specific to flood risk in Canada are as follows: 10% of Canada’s housing stock — that’s 1.5 million homes — is no longer insurable for flood risk. That’s one in ten homeowners who are unable to insure their biggest financial investment in Canada. The average cost of a flooded basement in Canada is $54,000. If you had the average flooded basement without insurance, it’s a pretty hefty price tag to correct your problem. In Quebec, in communities where flood risk exceeds 5% in a given year, Desjardins has stopped renewing mortgages. Over the past 12 years in Canada, for homes in communities impacted by catastrophic flooding, the average resale value of homes dropped by 8%, which in turn changed the loan-to-value ratio on mortgages. This has already happened.
Turning to wildfire, State Farm and Allstate have stopped writing new home fire insurance in California and Arizona. Without fire insurance, you cannot secure a mortgage, which renders a home a stranded asset. Basically, it’s valueless. In Canada, we need to understand that we are not immune to a California-style situation.
Now that we’ve covered some of the bad news, let’s turn to some good news regarding floods and wildfires and Canada’s housing market, starting with the return on investment associated with adaptation. One dollar invested in adaptation towards not having a problem produces $2 to $10 in avoided losses per decade.
This leads us to the infographics I’ve shared with you, starting with Three Steps to Cost Effective Home Flood Protection. The information presented on the infographic is based on input from scores of subject-matter experts, including the Standards Council of Canada, Canadian Red Cross and the Insurance Bureau of Canada, who I think you heard from yesterday.
Along the top row of the infographic, you see steps that a homeowner can take to protect his or her home for $0 to lower their flood exposure. Actions can be as simple as checking that a sump pump works. Most people realize that their sump pump doesn’t work when they have three feet of sewer water in their basement. Placing plastic covers over window wells and installing flood alarms are other simple and nearly cost-free actions that homeowners can take to limit flood risk. At a slightly elevated expense, in the zone of $500, a battery back-up supply can be attached to a sump pump to keep it running in the event of an electricity outage, which are very common during major storms.
Turning to wildfire risk and the infographic Three Steps to a Cost-Effective FireSmart Home, many actions, some for free, can be taken to limit exposure to wildfire — for example, removing shrubs from within a few metres of the wall of a house and replacing them with non-burnable material. Another precautionary measure is to store firewood well away from the house and not at the back door for purposes of convenience. At a slightly elevated expense, protection can include installing fire-resistant metal or cement fibre shingles, non-combustible siding and removing large needle-bearing trees that may be close to the house.
These infographics work to motivate homeowners to take action to protect their life savings. Upon receiving the infographics, within sic months, 70% of homeowners take at least two or more actions to protect their home that they otherwise would not have taken. In other words, people will protect their homes when they know what to do. The reason they are not acting is they don’t know what to do.
Currently, infographics on residential flood and wildfire risk are being shared with customers of major Canadian banks, for example, RBC and BMO; credit unions, Meridian Credit Union; property and casualty insurers including Intact; and scores of municipalities across Canada. These infographics are going out to about 3.5 or 3.6 million households per year.
The action that provides the most bang for the buck by far that Canada could take to limit flood and wildfire risk is to launch a national home flood protection education program and a national home wildfire protection education program to help Canadians help themselves to protect their homes. Rollout of this education program could include featuring infographics on Government of Canada websites, in communiques from MPs to their constituents, profiling infographics in newspapers, on public billboards and through social media.
In short, every day we don’t adapt is a day we don’t have.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Debbie Douglas, Executive Director, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants: Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to your study.
In my remarks, I will focus on the experience of OCASI member agencies in their work to meet the housing needs of immigrants and refugees.
OCASI, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, is the umbrella organization for immigrant- and refugee-serving agencies in Ontario. We have more than 250 member agencies across the province. Our members include housing providers who directly serve unhoused populations and those in need of emergency shelter, such as refugee claimants and survivors of gender-based violence.
Our members also assist refugees, immigrants, migrant workers and international students to find and retain affordable housing. This has become very difficult in recent years, especially for those located in small and rural communities. Immigrant and refugee families tend to be larger, and it is especially difficult to find larger affordable rental units.
Our members also provide a broad range of services which are often integral to finding and retaining safe, affordable and appropriate housing, including settlement services. They are primarily focused on helping clients to find affordable rental housing, not home ownership.
Recently arrived refugees and immigrants are more likely to be renters. According to the 2021 census, 56.9% of recent immigrants were renters, compared to only 24% among Canadian-born individuals and longer-term residents of immigrant background.
Recent immigrants and refugees experience significantly higher rates of poverty. The 2021 census found that one in five recent immigrants lived below the poverty line compared to 6% of the Canadian-born population.
Racialized people in Canada face a poverty rate of 14% compared to 8.5% for non-racialized Canadians. The highest rates are seen around Arabs, at around 18%, Chinese at 15% and Black at 13.9% residents. Racialized immigrants and refugees face among the highest poverty rates in the country, and this has a direct impact on their ability to access and retain housing.
There is a critical need for affordable and deeply affordable rent-geared-to-income housing to meet the needs of these populations. The National Housing Council has said that the federal government’s National Housing Strategy has not been sufficiently robust in funding for non-market housing options. An informal check-in with member agencies showed that only two OCASI member agencies benefited from the National Housing Strategy. Both were YWCAs — organizations with a large budget, robust finances and a strong and long-standing institutional presence in their communities. We have heard from our members that they simply could not place themselves in the National Housing Strategy, and given their relative economic and social deficit in this space, the entry point is unreachable, but there is tremendous interest in getting involved in the housing market.
We need all three levels of government involved in finding solutions. We would like to make the following recommendations for your consideration: Encourage all levels of government to fund the development of appropriate short-term housing solutions for arriving refugee claimants, which include settlement services and permanent housing solutions. Champion a federal-provincial initiative that also includes municipalities to fund newcomer-targeted housing subsidies linked to settlement services. The Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit is a good model. Ensure policies remove immigration status-based barriers. Collect disaggregated data to help identify and better address inequities. Support models that provide both stability and flexibility, enabling immigrants and refugees to quickly realize their full economic and social potential.
While this study is focused on the federal government, we note that provincial governments have massive impact as well through laws and policies on rent control and renovictions as well as bringing the provincial minimum wage up to a living wage, enforcing employment laws to prevent wage theft, all of which have a direct impact on accessing and retaining housing. All of these have an impact on how housing can be accessed by those who are most marginalized.
Thank you for your attention.
[Translation]
The Chair: Thank you. We will now proceed to questions.
[English]
Senator Marshall: I have questions for both witnesses, but I will start with Mr. Feltmate.
I was interested in what you said, Mr. Feltmate, because we had some witnesses who were from insurance talking about flooding, as you mentioned. You offered some suggestions with regard to education programs. I don’t think I’m aware of any education programs. You made some suggestions which, once I heard them, sounded logical. Don’t have shrubs up next to your house. Well, I’m going to have to redo my garden. Who do you see as being responsible for delivering the education program? I think it’s a great idea.
Mr. Feltmate: The education really is putting the infographics into the hands of homeowners because, frankly, they are designed in such a way that when someone looks at the infographic, there would be 15 actions on a page you could take to limit flood and wildfire risk for a home, and they could be understood in 45 seconds to one minute. They don’t require reading. They are instantaneously understandable. Basically, the challenge is just getting them into the hands of homeowners.
Who is responsible? A lot of bodies. I would say federal, provincial and municipal governments. We have probably got 30 or 40 municipalities, something like that, across Canada at the moment. When mayors see the infographics, within a minute and a half, they will say, “I want these, and I want them in the hand of my constituents to give them guidance on protection.” We have got some of the major banks. If you get a mortgage with the Royal Bank now, you get these infographics as part of the closing package.
Senator Marshall: What about the insurance companies? I have had the insurance company come to my house and go through all of the rooms and look around. I don’t recall anybody ever raising the issue with regard to shrubs or the trees in the backyard.
Mr. Feltmate: It depends. For sure, guaranteed, Intact Financial is pushing this information hard, and they are the largest property and casualty insurer in Canada by far. Other insurers are also acting in that regard, Desjardins, Co-operators, other big insurers. Remember, there are 160 property and casualty insurance companies in Canada, but 15 of them control 65% of the market. The big players are getting this information out. By the way, it’s in everybody’s interest to do so. It’s good for the homeowner not to have the flood or the fire, and it’s good for the insurance company. Everybody wins by getting this information out.
Senator Marshall: Thank you very much.
Ms. Douglas, what challenges are you facing with regard to finding housing? Where do you find the housing? I know people who have lived in Canada their whole lives are challenged. You’re saying now we have newcomers coming to the country. They have larger families and they are probably not familiar with the culture. How do your organizations go about finding housing?
Ms. Douglas: That is a very good question.
For immigrants who come in as permanent residents, of course, they come in with resources, but where they do find housing, landlords are sometimes asking for up to six months of rent, so funds that should be lasting a year or two while people settle themselves are going into housing, causing new immigrants to fall into deep poverty right at the beginning before they can really get settled and get moving. That’s why we think it’s so critically important, as we think about a National Housing Strategy, to consider what kinds of supports immigrants can be given during the first couple of years of settlement.
For us, though, in terms of the populations that have the most difficulties, it is those who are seeking asylum. They come into the country, they are sent into our municipal shelter system, and then it becomes very difficult for them because, until they have submitted a claim, they don’t receive a work permit, so they are unable to work. So they are then given social assistance, but we know with the housing prices, it is absolutely impossible.
Senator Marshall: They don’t have the resources.
Ms. Douglas: Exactly. Landlords are again asking for multi-month rent, and they don’t have a credit history.
As a short-term solution, we are saying to look at modelling across the country, such as the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit. It’s a portable benefit that municipalities are able to give to individuals, where they are then able to go out to rent. Often, it’s for up to a year, in some cases. We’re thinking that model can be made flexible enough so municipalities in different parts of the country are able to put the program —
Senator Marshall: That’s for Ontario, and you’re looking to move —
Ms. Douglas: It’s a model that can be scaled.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: Thank you for being here.
Ms. Douglas, in your pre-budget brief to the House of Commons finance committee, you suggested reconfiguring the housing strategy, particularly for the most vulnerable. What are your main recommendations?
[English]
Ms. Douglas: As I said in my remarks, many of our member agencies are very much interested in getting into building affordable housing. The way the housing strategy is laid out right now, there are so many hoops organizations need to jump through, including needing to have the financial backing to enter into that space, that there has to be other measures put in place so that an organization can be linked to a private house builder with backing from a bank, in terms of the money, to be able to build co-ops and rent-geared-to-income housing for their clients. The housing strategy right now really doesn’t allow for that. As I said, only two of my 250-member agencies, the two largest organizations, YWCAs, with quite a bit of private money, fundraising, have been able to enter that space and have been able to build housing both focused on women and on women fleeing violence.
If we can scale those models, if we can offer incentives for private investors so that we create private-public projects that then benefit newcomers, that would go a long way to meeting the housing stock of affordable housing. By affordable, I mean deeply affordable housing.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: Do you advocate for housing supply that better meets newcomer realities? As you mentioned, they often have larger families. They want to live around downtown areas so they don’t need a car and can use public transit. We see that there’s often no housing to suit this type of family.
Under the new program Build Canada Homes, should the CMHC provide incentives for building this type of housing in settings better suited to these vulnerable families?
[English]
Ms. Douglas: One of the examples we have been looking at is a Black community out of Nova Scotia who have been able to receive land from the municipal government and have been able to receive low-interest loans as a way to build housing. While they are getting that together, what they have been able to do is to find a landlords with available space who have, in trust, allowed them to use the houses for some of the larger families while they wait for the new build.
We have been pushing for municipalities to allow houses to be converted into fourplexes. We are seeing a lot of pushback from neighbours, what we call “nimbyism” as you know. Those are the kinds of housing we need to accommodate multi-generational families. Not only do the immigrant families tend to have more children, but they tend to live in multi-generational families, so you may have a family of seven or eight people. If we allow houses to be converted without a lot of hoops to be jumped through in terms of zoning and those types of things, that would go a long way to begin to alleviate some of the immediate housing needs that we have.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: Dr. Feltmate, using Canadian wood is not only a very important policy, but it’s also a good thing for carbon emissions. By using Canadian wood, do you think we can meet that objective without having too much impact on housing affordability, which is a major issue for young families today?
[English]
Mr. Feltmate: I’m not sure it would make a material difference. I’m not sure anyone has really worked through those calculations, but I don’t think it would make a material difference.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you for being here, both of you. I’m going to start with a couple of questions on immigration, and I would like you, Debbie Douglas, to talk a little bit about the debate on immigration.
I think we’ve seen in the past two to three years, not much longer, a sort of turn in public opinion on immigration. We had a broad consensus for a number of years, and it’s turned a bit negative in the last couple of years. A lot of the blame was put on immigration for the shortage of housing. If I look at universities and colleges, they’ve opened their doors wide, and they don’t ensure the students they admit have housing, whether those students are coming from abroad or the province next door. I would like your thoughts on the debate and whether universities and colleges or employers who hire temporary foreign workers should be doing more to house people they bring in. Should there be more o construction there? What are your thoughts on the overall debate that’s happening?
Ms. Douglas: One of the most unfortunate things that has happened here in Canada is the change in our attitudes around immigration and immigrants. For decades, Canadians have always had a consensus that immigrants built our economy and that they contributed to our social good. As we hit the housing crisis, unfortunately the argument turned to we were bringing in too many immigrants, we were bringing in too many people who were temporary, too many international students — as you say, senator, that we have opened up our doors to too many.
My argument is that for over 30 years, both our federal and provincial governments absented themselves from building housing. We moved away from developing new housing, which, of course, created a scarcity. At the same time, we were seeing provinces really advocating with the federal government to open up international student numbers because it helped offset the provinces’ contributions to post-secondary education. International students pay three or four times the tuition that we as Canadians have had to pay in school, and that then became a source of revenue for universities and colleges. For a time, the pipeline was open for everybody, and not only in our public colleges and universities. We also allowed private colleges and universities, including career colleges — and I’m trying really hard not to talk down about career colleges — whose diplomas often didn’t lead anywhere. We have provinces like Ontario that were linking our public institutions to these private colleges as a way to further encourage students, which allows the provinces to decrease the transfer payments to colleges and universities and had their budgets built on the back of international students.
If we are going to increase temporary foreign workers, including those who are not highly skilled — so, for example, when we opened up our country to temporary foreign workers coming in to work at places like Tim Hortons — we should expect the employers to provide housing. It’s the same way for those who come through the seasonal agricultural workers program. The farmers are expected to provide housing, and I can say a lot about that. The houses are inadequate; we don’t have enough inspection. All of those things remain deep concerns. But the whole idea is that if you’re going to bring people in to work for you, then you have some responsibility to ensure that they are housed.
Similarly with international students, if we are going to bring in international students and if we are going to pay for our post-secondary education system on the backs of international students, then they should be able to come in knowing that they will have places that are clean and adequate as opposed to what we have been seeing where we have situations where students are sharing rooms. They are often renting a bed — “I sleep in the morning; you sleep at night” — without any sort of oversight, and hence this conversation.
I say all this cautioning that we cannot blame the housing or the affordability crisis on immigrants, including international students. We created our housing crisis. We didn’t pay enough attention to what our system could absorb in terms of its capacity. Unfortunately, the narrative has been taken up by all Canadians that somehow temporary foreign workers, international students and immigrants are to blame for the situation that we find ourselves in in terms of housing and not enough affordable housing.
Senator Ross: Ms. Douglas, back in June of 2022, the federal government implemented a ban on the purchase of homes by people who were not permanent residents or Canadian citizens, except for some situations where there might be some exemptions, like certain students, certain international students, certain types of work permits, and diplomats, I think, were exempt. Also, they had to be outside the CAs or the CMAs. Can you talk about how you see that has impacted the ability of those who maybe are able to or would have been able to purchase? That’s now been extended for an additional two years to January of 2027.
Ms. Douglas: That law was brought in as a way to curb the financialization of housing. There was a belief that foreigners were buying up our housing, that it was speculative and jacking up the cost of housing, and some of that was true. But we also know that some of our large landlords here, who are Canadians, have been buying up housing and jacking up prices. They would scout areas where housing was more affordable, purchase that housing, renovict the tenants living there and jack up the price in some of our poorer neighbourhoods. Despite the 2022 laws brought in, we still find ourselves in this housing crisis because we did nothing to stop the broad financialization of housing, housing becoming a commodity as opposed to a right to shelter and those kinds of things. Extending it until the next two years without new builds, we will continue to see this situation.
Senator Ross: What about the idea that it did not include units of four or greater; it only included three or less?
Ms. Douglas: I didn’t know that. For me, I don’t think the size of the house makes as much of a difference. What we needed to do, and still need to do, and provinces are implicated here, is figure out ways to stop the financialization of housing, and one of the best ways to do that is to ensure that we have rent-control legislation across the country.
Senator Ross: In New Brunswick, there has been an implementation of a 3% rent cap, but I hear a lot of landlords saying that their costs are rising faster than 3%. Whether it’s the power bills or the other things that they have, their costs are going up more than 3%. How do you address that?
Ms. Douglas: I don’t want to argue with individual landlords. From our experience, we know that most landlords don’t pick up the cost of utilities. Tenants themselves are expected to pay those costs. Once the house is built, the landlord is basically responsible for things like insurance, but even content insurance is the responsibility of the tenants.
Landlords pushing back against rent control is really about wanting the ability to charge exorbitant rent when they can so that the rental property goes to the highest bidder and those who are most able to afford it, which then drives those who make less money, those who are poor, into what we often call ghettoes and worse situations. That’s when we begin to see two and three families having to share houses, especially in large urban centres, which is unhealthy for everybody.
Senator MacAdam: Mr. Feltmate, according to the Canadian Climate Institute, since 2023, climate-related disasters have caused the Atlantic Canada economy over $750 million in insured losses. CLIMAtlantic also indicates that the frequency and severity of extreme events caused outsized compounding losses, some triggering housing insecurity. Yesterday, we also heard from the Insurance Bureau of Canada. They testified before our committee, and they’ve been calling for a national summit on resilience, suggesting that the previously held National Summit on Combatting Auto Theft, which had a clear action plan and accountability mechanisms, could serve as a template. Would you agree that this would be beneficial to supporting the housing industry — a summit — and, if so, what would you see as the key components of a national summit?
Mr. Feltmate: We could hold a national summit, and it would probably do some good. However, we’ve got a lot of policy in this country on protection from extreme weather — for Canada as a whole, which would include the Maritimes.
For example, in 2016, Canada had the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, and in that document, there was a lot of discussion on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Chapter 4 of it focused on adaptation to climate change, with very specific actions that could have been taken that would have limited the amount of damage realized in Nova Scotia in 2023 and, more broadly, in the country. That document came out in 2016, and within a year, it sat on a shelf. Nobody did anything with it.
Then we had the Expert Panel on Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience in 2018, where we had 22 members from across the country, subject matter experts in flood and wildfire risk and so forth, zero in on best practices to be engaged to mobilize adaptation. Within six months, that document sat on a shelf.
Now we have had the National Adaptation Strategy come out in 2023. It was a pretty good document that outlined 26 targets toward which we could move to mitigate flood risk in the country. And, now, that is maybe not a dead document but it’s not far off.
The bottom line with Canada is that we are policy rich and operations poor. In my opinion, we don’t need more study. We know exactly what to do. We know where the problems exist, and we know where the solutions reside. The problem is that we’re not deploying known solutions to known problems nearly quickly enough. The problem is going up on a steep curve. We’re keeping up on a shallow curve, and the lines are separating. My sense is that we need to get on to adaptation very rapidly.
Could we hold another meeting? I suppose. It probably wouldn’t hurt anything. Actually, it would hurt in this sense: The longer you delay, the more it costs, because the problems aren’t stopping, period.
Where we’re realizing success is at the municipal level. Municipalities in Canada are leading on preparedness for extreme weather. The insurance industry is, and the banks are. The federal government is not there. Look at the budget yesterday. There is virtually nothing in it on adaptation — next to nothing.
I kind of went beyond your question.
Senator MacAdam: That’s fine. Thank you.
With the 20 seconds I have left, getting back to your infographics, I just wanted to ask you something on that. I looked at those. They’re very interesting. How prepared do you think Canadians are in this respect? What’s the level of climate literacy that you’re seeing among residents and homeowners?
Mr. Feltmate: The literacy, in the absence of receiving the infographics, is pretty low, but the second they receive it, people take action. We’ve tested this extensively in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and Saskatchewan with the Red Cross to actually look at the actions people take after they receive the infographics versus not. As I mentioned in my remarks, within six months, 70% of homeowners take at least two actions to protect their home from flooding or wildfire that they otherwise wouldn’t have taken. So the literacy is low, but it’s coming up, and this system works. One of the things I realized over the years is that pamphlets, reports and so forth don’t work. People don’t read them. If you want people to act, you have to put material in front of them that, within 45 to 60 seconds, they can understand, saying, “I get it, and I will do it.” If they have to read three pages, they’re not going to do it.
Senator Kingston: I would like to talk to Ms. Douglas about refugees.
I have some experience at the community level, and I’m concerned about larger families because many refugees come with larger families. I would like to ask a broad question, and that would be: Do you have any concerns regarding the transition of affordable housing programming from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to Build Canada Homes in terms of the local community entities that look after these things?
Ms. Douglas: Thank you for that question.
We’re still trying to figure out what the relationship is between those two entities. We were surprised, I must say, when the Build Canada Homes was established as opposed to scaling CMHC, if that was what was required. We are hoping that CMHC remains an active player in that space but, at the same time, we are hoping that Build Canada Homes is paying attention to the needs of refugees and the fact that, when they are looking at building — we’ve moved away from the language of “social housing.” We’re looking at building affordable housing, and we are hoping that they are paying attention to adequacy of housing as well. That means the size of the housing and how it’s built. Are we taking issues of disability into account, as an example? What happens between those two entities is something that we’re paying attention to as Build Canada Homes’ mandate gets rolled out.
Senator Kingston: What they say to this point about Build Canada Homes is that they will be looking at deeply affordable and affordable housing and they will be looking at subsidized types of housing. I’m just wondering if you have a plan or if your sector has a plan to speak to the needs of the refugee population, particularly in terms of large families and so on.
Ms. Douglas: Absolutely. When I talked about being able to build houses, that’s not only high-rise apartments but fourplexes, so that even when you have a family of eight or nine — multigenerational families — within a fourplex, you can have two or three different living spaces within what is still a family home. Those are the kinds of models that I’m hoping this new entity, Build Canada Homes, will be taking a look at for refugees and other families as well.
Senator Kingston: Thank you.
Senator Hébert: Ms. Douglas, thank you very much for the work you do. I want to reassure you that it’s not all Canadians who are buying the shocking narrative that immigration is responsible for the housing crisis that we’re in. I’m totally with you on that. You are totally right, also, to remind us about the importance that immigration has, not only in enriching our society in general but also for our economy. I think we are just about to see how important it is, given the measures that have been announced in the budget concerning temporary foreign workers. We are going to be retrieving 300,000 temporary foreign workers, starting in 2026, from our economy, businesses and from every region of Canada.
I would like to hear you on Build Canada Homes. Have you had some conversations with these people? Did you have the chance to discuss it with them? Do you know if there is going to be some amounts of housing that will be built or reserved for immigrants or anything like that?
Ms. Douglas: We have no formal agreement. I haven’t had an opportunity to speak with Ms. Bailão since she was appointed. I was a member of her housing committee when she developed the 2030 plan for the City of Toronto. She and I have a long history as board members of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. I know that she is very much aware of what our position is on the need to build housing for immigrants and refugees and, in the interim, to ensure there are programs like the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit.
IHAP, the Interim Housing Assistance Program is, unfortunately, coming to an end in 2027 as confirmed in yesterday’s budget release, assisted municipalities, especially our larger municipalities like Toronto, to be able to support refugee and asylum seekers as they made their way through our shelter and transition housing. The new refugee housing hub in Peel Region is a good example of building transition housing for them.
We absolutely will be having serious conversations with the new entity in terms of how they work with communities and with my agencies in order to get housing built for immigrants and refugees.
Senator Hébert: In that sense, do you know if Build Canada Homes will have some plans not only for immigration but also to build apartments and will be able to respond to the needs you have talked about for bigger families, more rooms and other things?
Ms. Douglas: It certainly is on the table. We’re paying attention to the fact that factory prefabricated housing is becoming increasingly popular. We think that’s one of the solutions that we can look at in terms of ensuring that adequately sized housing is built.
One of the challenges is finding the land, especially in large urban centres where most immigrants tend to settle. That’s part of the tension we’re facing. Where do we find the land as opposed to how can we use existing housing stock and repurpose them into larger spaces for larger multigenerational immigrant families? I’m hoping it will be prioritized for immigrants and refugees.
We have also put on the table that a certain percentage of housing should be put aside for women and women-led families who tend to have higher levels of poverty, women who are fleeing violence. We’re hoping those are the conversations we’ll be able to have with Build Canada Homes around some of the particular populations and how we ensure that there are opportunities for those who are working with those populations to get into the building housing space.
Senator Hébert: Thank you.
Senator Galvez: You are right. In the Canada Strong budget, after reading it, I wrote an op-ed saying the budget commits $40 million over two years to launch a Youth Climate Corps to train young Canadians to respond to the climate emergency. It also allocates 257 over 40 years to Natural Resources to lease four aircraft and boost aerial firefighting capacity, and $55 million to Public Safety Canada. That’s all. That’s been it. That’s nothing.
You show us this graphic that is really unbelievable. This graphic gives me nightmares. Next year there are going to be another three or four extreme weather events. It will cost more than the $9.1 billion. We don’t have anything. The strategies we are putting up are failing. There is nothing. What is the damage to the economy? What is the damage to the housing we need to build because of this housing crisis?
Mr. Feltmate: By not preparing for extreme weather, it means we’re putting a lot — by the way, on that chart, those are the insured losses.
Senator Galvez: Insured, yes.
Mr. Feltmate: For every dollar of insured loss, there are $3 to $4 of uninsured loss realized that has to be picked up by governments, businesses or homeowners.
To my mind, we want to mobilize adaptation so we’re not paying to rebuild a basement that flooded that shouldn’t have been flooded in the first place. At an average cost of $54,000 per house — that’s the average cost of a flooded basement — on one house alone, that’s money that could have gone to support more beds in hospitals. It could have supported teachers in schools or whatever it is. It could have done a lot of good. Because we’re not mobilizing adaptation, we are wasting money on correcting problems that shouldn’t have been happening in the first place.
Now we have people who are experiencing two or three floods in their homes over time because we’re also not working at the community level to identify where water is going to go when the big storms hit, to delineate where it’s going to go. Once we know that, we can use berms, diversion channels, holding ponds, cisterns, bioswales and permeable surfacing. There is a lot of action we can take in neighbourhoods to direct water to safe locations and keep people and property out of harm’s way and save the money that otherwise would have gone to correct problems in the aftermath of the flood, wildfire or whatever it might be.
By the way, for the FireSmart program, we know — applied at the level of the community and the home — we can reduce wildfire risk by 50% to 75% of the damage that is being realized.
Senator Galvez: Ms. Douglas, previous witnesses have told us the affordable housing crisis is different than the affordability crisis. Do you have the same opinion? What is your understanding on these two issues?
Ms. Douglas: When we talk about the affordability crisis, we’re taking a look at day-to-day living, the cost of food, transportation, education, those kinds of things, given how the provinces have absented themselves from funding post-secondary education properly.
Housing affordability is a different issue. We don’t lack housing stock in many places in Canada. What we lack is housing that is adequate in size. If you look at many of the condo buildings in downtown Toronto, probably even here in Ottawa, as you know, those small boxes that go for $3,000 or $4,000 a month aren’t affordable for anybody I know. They are so small that regular families can’t live in them. That’s why we need to build adequate and deeply affordable housing.
Senator Dalphond: I have questions mostly for you, Ms. Douglas.
Affordability, to follow up on the question of my colleague, is one thing. It’s the overall things on the market, looking at the salary and everything else. Whatever is the affordability level, there is a point where some people will be unable to access a proper dwelling or unit because they are earning so little, for personal limits or for discriminatory reasons or whatever.
I see in the budget discussions the BCH, Build Canada Homes, the corporation, would have up to $16 billion targeted to social dwelling, co-operative and people who are living without a roof. Do you agree with this perspective and the fact that this corporation will be focusing not on market issues but really on those that cannot be active players in the market?
Ms. Douglas: We have to. We have to build housing and we have to build housing quickly, and we have to look at existing housing and how we can change them into the kind of housing that is necessary for people. Wages have not kept up with the cost of living. We know that our economy is becoming more and more of a service economy. We know that women are overrepresented, especially women-headed households are overrepresented, in poverty levels. Women make up 80% of the care economy, and they are highly underpaid with very little benefits. The $16 billion isn’t enough, but it’s a start to be able to build housing that people can live in. No one should have to pay 60% or 70% of their income in housing. No one should have to decide on a month-to-month basis whether they are going to feed their children or pay their rent. And God forbid if they are sick or they have a disability.
I hope I’m impressing on you how critically urgent this issue is. We can’t afford to continue to debate what kind of housing. We can’t afford to get into jurisdictional fights between the federal government and the provincial government and the municipalities. We need to build housing that is adequate. We need to build housing that is deeply affordable so nobody is paying more than 30% of their income in housing. We need to ensure that housing is seen as a right and not a privilege. We need to figure out how to stop the financialization of housing by putting in place really good, strict rent controls so that landlords are not jacking up prices and not pretending to renovate houses only to kick tenants out and be able to jack it up for new people who are coming in. There are a number of recommendations government can take a lead on in ensuring that housing is available and appropriate.
Senator Dalphond: I guess this is a good use of Crown land.
Ms. Douglas: Absolutely.
Senator Dalphond: Because that will be faster than to change the zoning, buy the land, whatever. I think the Arbo project in Toronto that was announced two weeks ago will be a first step for that.
Ms. Douglas: It will be a good step for that, but we also got excited when many of our public sector workers here in Ottawa were working from home. We were thinking that many of our federally owned buildings could be spaces that could be converted into deeply affordable housing. Buildings owned by government, right? The Downsview project that you are talking about. But we need to ensure that when we are building these new projects, we are getting it right the first time.
Senator Dalphond: Thank you.
Senator Ross: This question for you too, Ms. Douglas. Short-term rentals or Airbnb-type, properties are said to use up a lot of potential space that could be long-term housing and is really reducing housing stock. Some people say there should be stricter regulations; some people say it’s too difficult to regulate; others say it’s good for tourism and economic benefit. I was reading that Barcelona will be banning all short-term rentals by 2028, and New York now has pretty strict registration rules, and so do some places in Canada. What are your thoughts on that?
Ms. Douglas: If we’re going to allow Airbnbs, then we need to look at taxing them the way we tax hotels so that there is some income coming into public coffers. As municipalities, we have to pay attention to the fact that, increasingly, what could be good rental housing is being turned into short-term housing. I don’t think I buy the argument that it somehow increases tourism, as an example. I actually support restricting the amount of housing that can be bought and used for short-term rental housing. I support stricter regulations around it.
Senator Ross: Like owner-occupied?
Ms. Douglas: Exactly.
Senator Ross: Thank you.
[Translation]
The Chair: Thank you very much to the witnesses. That was extremely fascinating. The senators still have a lot of questions to ask, but we have a time limit. Thank you for your excellent answers and your generosity.
For our second panel this evening, we’re pleased to welcome Carolyn Whitzman, Senior Housing Researcher, School of Cities, University of Toronto. From the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, we also have Marc Lee, Senior Economist, by video conference.
Welcome. Thank you very much for accepting our invitation. We will now hear four to five minutes of opening remarks from each of you, and then we will proceed to questions. We will start with Ms. Whitzman.
Carolyn Whitzman, Senior Housing Researcher, School of Cities, University of Toronto: Thank you, honourable senators.
[English]
Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee tonight.
In 1972, 232,227 homes were completed in Canada. In 2024, approximately 210,543 homes were completed in metropolitan Canada. We can only estimate the 2024 number because we no longer track home completions in non-metropolitan areas. If you don’t count completions, they don’t count. We don’t really know how many homes subsidized by taxpayers under the National Housing Strategy actually helped those who need housing most. Meanwhile, we are building fewer homes than we did 50 years ago when Canada’s population was half of what it is now and household sizes were significantly larger.
But it is not only aggregate supply that matters. In 1972, 25% of completions — 45,000 homes that year alone — were non-market homes, housing provided by public authorities, cooperatives and other non-profits whose mission is permanent affordability, not maximizing returns. Under the National Housing Strategy, non-market housing completions have been between 2% and 3%, less than 7,000, in 2024. That’s well below the quantum necessary to meet the needs of very low-, low- and moderate-income households. It is a misuse of the $88 billion spent on the National Housing Strategy, whose targets were to reduce homelessness and housing need, yet whose programs primarily helped market developers create homes that were only accessible to higher-income households. In fact, Canada continues to experience a net loss of housing affordable to low-income households under the National Housing Strategy, nine homes at less than $1,000 per month lost for every one new home completed at that price point from 2016 to 2021.
The basic question of housing policy is, who needs what housing, where and at what cost? In my work for the Federal Housing Advocate, I have estimated housing need in Canada. Over 4.4 million households are in unaffordable, overcrowded and poorly repaired housing, 3 million of whom are very low- or low-income households with incomes below 50% of area median household income. That includes 1.7 million households in official core housing need and at least 1.3 million post-secondary students who, again, aren’t counted in housing need statistics, but we know that only 10% of 2.3 million students live in residence.
It also includes an unknown number of homeless people, but at least 250,000. Ontario, which has the most accurate by-name count, had 81,515 homeless people as of 2024, which is a population the size of a midsized city like Peterborough. At least 400,000 of the 700,000 people who live in congregate housing — rooming houses, single-room occupancy, supportive housing and seniors assisted living — again, we know very little about their needs, let alone how to meet them. If you don’t count people, they don’t count. There are also at least half a million adults doubling up with roommates or family due to affordability concerns and hundreds of thousands of households, especially young adults, leaving high-cost cities like Toronto and Vancouver, primarily due to being unable to find adequate, affordable homes.
If, and only if, at least 200,000 new and acquired homes per year are non-market for the next three decades can homelessness and housing need be eradicated over the next generation. It can be done. France created targets of 20% non-market housing for every municipality in 2000 and increased those targets to 25% in most municipalities by 2016. In France in 2024, 15% of low-income tenants are in unaffordable homes. In Canada, the proportion is 55%, and yet Canada has legislation committing itself to the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing for all.
What mechanisms can work? Long-term, low-rate federal finance combined with use of government land and construction innovation worked to scale up non-market housing in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. If Build Canada Homes can expand its winning combination of large and small government land sites, acquisition and new build, take a portfolio approach and use it to scale up non-market housing to 20% of the total quantum, it would be following international best practices in France, Austria, Denmark and Finland. Finland has shown the way to eliminate homelessness by its low-cost, non-market housing with supports.
A new generation of bilateral agreements with provinces, territories, municipalities and regions need to create much more flexible zoning and building codes to allow low-rise apartments and congregate housing types like student, supportive and senior housing everywhere. We need to make funding conditional on tenant protection to ensure that the bathtub plug is stopping the draining of low-cost rentals as we meet the supply needs of all Canadians.
Thank you for your time tonight.
The Chair: Thank you.
Marc Lee, Senior Economist, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives: Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Build Canada Homes initiative. I believe that BCH is a promising model for developing new housing supply, but there are, of course, many details that need to be elaborated along the way.
For many years, housing advocates have called on federal and provincial governments to support the development of non-market housing, including co-ops and other public and social and non-profit housing. This is the type of housing that was supported federally from the 1960s to the early 1990s, often developed in partnership with the provinces and non-profit organizations.
This appeared to be the promise when the federal government launched its National Housing Strategy in 2017. Eight years later, the NHS has largely failed to deliver a large-scale build-out of non-market housing, with most of its focus being on low-interest loans for private rental housing developments, along with fairly weak affordability criteria.
Ultimately, the challenge with a for-profit housing model is that it builds to what the market will bear, seeking market prices for ownership housing or market rents for rental housing. As such, it alone is unable to deliver the dedicated affordable housing needed by low- to middle-income households, much less to eradicate homelessness.
I prefer and would advocate for a non-profit or a public model because, in this case, a building only needs to charge break-even rents; that is, rents that cover the amortized, upfront costs of building, such as land, construction, hard and soft costs, financing and development charges, as well as a provision for operations and maintenance.
First of all, eliminating the need for developer profits automatically lowers the break-even rents that can be delivered.
Second, public policy can also lower each of those components in that upfront stack of costs and, therefore, the break-even rents that need to be charged.
Third, deeper affordability could be achieved through various cross-subsidies — that is, lower-than-average rents for specific households that are offset by others paying closer to market rent. A lot of different combinations are possible, so long as the total rental income from a particular building or development or a portfolio is at break-even levels. Then you can consider the non-profit model to be economical in the sense that no further subsidies are required from governments.
In the public model that we are thinking about now, the federal government can also amortize its capital investments over longer periods of time, say 50 years instead of 25 or 30 years, in order to lower the resulting break-even rents.
It’s also important for the federal government to invest in community-level infrastructure for things like water and sewer upgrades that are inevitably needed when new development takes place, particularly at higher densities. I think blaming “municipal gatekeepers” isn’t particularly helpful here because local governments are just trying to pay for the incremental costs of new housing developments. The federal government definitely has a role to play if it wants those fees to come down.
For climate and affordability reasons, BCH should focus on medium-density housing, multi-unit rental housing, mostly wood-frame construction, built to high energy efficiency standards and using clean technologies like electric heat pumps. Canada already has a lot of expertise developed in green construction, and these efforts could be scaled up through BCH.
BCH has big hopes for modular or prefabricated construction technologies to transform the industry, shifting work to a mix of factory jobs with final assembly on site. Recent studies point to modular construction techniques lowering construction hard costs by about 20% compared to regular construction, while trimming building times up to 50%. Ultimately, achieving those kinds of cost savings requires some economies of scale in production, and that can be helped by following pre-approved standardized designs as we’ve seen come out recently from CMHC. Those types of things could also help speed up approvals, so it’s a win-win.
The federal government also has a role to help by subsidizing training and supporting the development of domestic supply chains. For example, HVAC equipment is largely imported from the United States, but it’s an area where domestic capacity could be dramatically ramped up.
Done properly, there need not be any cost penalty to building housing that is economical, affordable and green. Building these units at scale would also reduce pressures in the private rental market that are keeping rents high.
Finally, federal land assets held by the Canada Lands Company have been rolled into BCH, a total portfolio of 88 federal properties deemed suitable for housing. On the scale that we are talking about and the ambition, we may also need to think down the road about new public land acquisition that would contribute to getting more housing built. Ultimately, building publicly owned buildings on public land through BCH would create long-lived assets that pay for themselves over time through the resulting rental income.
The big question for me before I close is whether BCH can be rolled out quickly for the many populations that really need it, including Indigenous communities, people with disabilities and so forth. This is a question of the scale that’s needed. Given some slowdown in new housing construction and essentially the collapse of the investor-driven condo model, scaling up BCH could also be timely for construction workers.
As for scale, 4,000 units over six sites is a good start, kind of a proof of concept, but really more of a pilot. Remember, Canada’s baseline for new housing construction is more like 200,000 units per year. CCPA would do an alternative federal budget which has called for a million new non-market homes over the course of a decade in order to both address backlogs and accommodate population growth.
I’ll end it there and look forward to the discussion.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senators, we will try to target four minutes per question.
Senator Marshall: My first question is for Dr. Whitzman. The reason why I picked you as my first person to answer my question is you said something about a question I’ve been asking for a couple of years. You mentioned you can’t get the information on housing starts. I’ve been looking for that information for a couple of years now and have raised it so many times, but I haven’t been able to get any information on housing starts. You mentioned that as something that’s very important. Have you found any information?
Ms. Whitzman: Well, Senator Marshall, the problem is not so much with housing starts, which give a sense of trends, but with housing completions. And in 2023 —
Senator Marshall: It is completions, yes.
Ms. Whitzman: — the CMHC stopped providing housing completions for non-metropolitan areas. I have been asking and I’ve gotten a special data order that’s on non-market completions, but it doesn’t include, for instance, from Newfoundland, anything other than St. John’s. There is one metropolitan area for every province, so Charlottetown, for instance, is included, even though it’s not a metropolitan area, it’s not big enough. But it’s simply unacceptable not to have completion data.
The other thing that has been truly unacceptable in my mind is when you put at least $88 billion into a National Housing Strategy, you would want to know the rents of all units that are subsidized, not just the 20% that are allegedly affordable but not affordable using the Government of Canada’s own definition of affordability which is no more than 30% of your income.
Senator Marshall: I read your article on scaling up affordable housing, and you mentioned the $40 billion a year. You recommended the federal government commit $40 billion a year. I was wondering if you’ve received any type of response on that dollar amount, because $40 billion a year is quite a substantial amount, and even for launching Build Canada Homes, only $7 billion over five years is provided. Have you received any type of response with regard to your recommendation for $40 billion a year?
Ms. Whitzman: Well, I will be happy to send on a report I recently did for the Maytree foundation, and that uses the kind of accounting — Tyler Meredith who is a fellow at the Maytree foundation has talked a bit about this, but also my colleague here tonight, Marc Lee, has talked about it. If it is a government asset and if you are putting in financing to approve that asset, which is government land turned into housing, it is accounted for differently in government terms.
Senator Marshall: Mr. Lee, you were saying Build Canada Homes was a promising model. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternativesis a prominent organization. How are you going to monitor Build Canada Homes to make sure that it delivers what you think it’s going to deliver?
Mr. Lee: Right now, we rely on what the government reports out, and sometimes that’s better than others. At various times during the National Housing Strategy, there were spreadsheets listing projects across the country and you could break them all down. I think the material has been removed from the Government of Canada’s website. I would love to see a much higher level of transparency from the federal government in regard to housing overall. But we’re going to be keeping our eye on it.
It is important to test these models out and figure out what’s successful and then really scale that up. The key part is the scaling up. We had a program here in British Columbia where I live called BC Builds — same kind of thing, really good non-profit model, the provincial government putting in land and low-interest financing and bringing in other partners. It’s basically stalled at about 5,000 units on construction.
Senator Marshall: I think Dr. Whitzman might be able to help you —
Mr. Lee: But remember, the key piece around the money is that the rental income eventually pays for the upfront investment, so that is a really important part.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: Thank you for being here.
Ms. Whitzman, we can fund new construction, but we forget that we can quickly increase the number of non-market housing units by allowing NPOs and co-operatives to buy existing units. Should that alternative be explored? Should federal programs be adapted to allow existing housing to be converted to non-market housing?
[English]
Ms. Whitzman: Yes, absolutely, senator.
There are three aspects. One aspect is new builds, and that has received a lot of attention from the current federal government, but there is also acquisitions. As Mr. Lee said, the new-build aspect of BC Builds has not been terribly large scale, but it is fairly impressive that the B.C. Rental Protection Fund bought half of the apartments on the market in B.C. last year and were able to save a lot of homes that were at risk of losing affordability. Then the third aspect that you mentioned is also very important, which is renovations. Renovations can also be for energy efficiency and accessibility, but there can also be renovations, for instance, very successful ones in Calgary, of office buildings to residential or other forms of conversion. So if it is a crisis — and we certainly believe that it is — and if it’s a wartime effort, then all aspects should receive attention, including acquisitions and renovations and retrofits and new builds, besides which acquisitions and renovations are generally more rapid than new builds.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: Thank you very much.
Mr. Lee, removing the GST for first-time homebuyers seems like a strong move. However, I fear that, instead of improving affordability, it will increase profitability for developers. Are there other ways to have a greater impact on affordability for first-time homebuyers?
[English]
Mr. Lee: I think the conversation around the GST is somewhat similar to what we hear about development charges at the municipal level. They tend to be framed as a cost that has to be paid and that gets reflected in the price. If you can just reduce those costs, eliminate the GST or eliminate these municipal fees, then inevitably the cost of housing will go down. I think that logic is actually incorrect because the price of housing is largely determined by the demand side. It’s about how much capital plus a mortgage a household could put up. There is a ceiling on the total amount they could purchase the house for. How the cost components of that break down doesn’t really matter. You could eliminate the municipal fees, but the result will be the same prices and higher profits going to developers or to the original landholders that have seen an increase in the value of that land.
Again, in a soft market, personally, I don’t think we should be applying GST to housing in any event, because it’s not a typical good and service, a consumption good. It has very different long-lived investment-type properties. It’s both a consumption good and an investment good for households. The fact that we tacked GST onto housing in the first place, I think, is problematic, but we seem to be moving away from that, particularly with regard to rentals and student housing and that sort of stuff.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you to both our witnesses.
I’m going to ask you a question that I’m sure you’ll hate, but I’m looking for a simple answer. We understand that the solutions are complex, but for Build Canada Homes, what would be the simplest way to deal with people who are currently unhoused — I shouldn’t say deal with, but provide housing for people who are unhoused? Is it modular homes on Canada lands? Is it renovation? What’s the quickest way we can deal with that most urgent group of people?
Ms. Whitzman: I’m sorry, Senator Cardozo. Are you asking me?
Senator Cardozo: I would like to hear from you both, so please go ahead.
Ms. Whitzman: It depends on the context and the place. The most efficient way to deal with homelessness is absolutely housing with support, low-cost housing with supports if necessary. That can be provided — I’m sorry that there isn’t a three-word answer to that — in a number of ways. You can have modular builds that have been quite rapid, and we saw that with the Rapid Housing Initiative. You can have conversions that are quite rapid, and we’ve also seen that as part of the Rapid Housing Initiative. We can see acquisitions combined with targeted housing benefits. It’s also important to keep in mind the prevention of homelessness is at least as important as dealing with homelessness once it occurs, and there you’re looking at rental protection and you’re looking at rent banks. There isn’t one thing. We know what works, and we need to do more of it.
Mr. Lee: I agree with what Professor Whitzman has said. Here in British Columbia, we’ve had a model of temporary modular housing, small two-storey buildings with 12 to 15 small apartments in them, but they have been generally put up on land that is eventually going to be developed but maybe not for a couple of years and, generally, at a cost of $100,000 per unit.
If the political will is there — I think we started bringing these in when Vancouver was hosting the 2010 Olympics — these things can be built very quickly. In fact, if you go up in the North, you’ll see, not so much for people who are unhoused but in the work camps for people working on LNG, projects or other big projects, it’s all temporary modular housing. We know how to do this. It is a question of putting up the money and political will.
Ultimately, I think that a lot of people who are unhoused in Canada are not just necessarily running through a bad period in their life. They are dealing with mental health issues, addiction issues and other complex challenges. The cost in terms of ongoing operating supports associated with that also needs to be factored into it. It’s not a pure building-construction issue.
Senator Cardozo: Would modular work better in Vancouver where the climate is milder compared to Ottawa or Montreal where there is more severe cold? And how high can a modular building go? How many storeys?
Mr. Lee: It’s a good question about what the upper limit is, and that’s where some of the innovation in Canada could take place. You could definitely build that model on the scale that is needed.
Ms. Whitzman: If I could just jump in, I was on the federal task force on industrial construction last year, and there is a common misunderstanding that forms of industrial construction, such as modular, are going to be like those little temporary shelters that you see around schools, for instance. Industrial construction can be just as well built, and, in fact, better built because it’s built in factory conditions instead of on site, as anything else. It can be just as beautiful, et cetera. It’s not a shack. It’s actual housing. The temporary aspect in B.C. pertained to the land lease underneath. It wasn’t the buildings. The buildings weren’t going to blow down in a storm, and they’re perfectly well insulated. I just wanted to make that clear.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you. That’s helpful.
Senator Kingston: I would like to pose my question to both of you — and thank you for being here — because I think both of you would have something to say.
My experience with people who are unhoused and who have significant issues like each of you alluded to, mental health, addictions and so on, is that in order for them to be successful in housing, they need support from the get-go. My concern is that, at all levels of government, it seems like that is an afterthought when it should be built into what is happening at this point in time, if we’re going to solve the problem that lots of people are concerned about, which is seeing people on the street and in distress, having problems and worrying about their own safety because people seem to be in such dire distress when actually what they need is a roof over their head and someone to help them to stay in it. I’m wondering what advice you would have to give to the new Build Canada Homes about how to properly support that segment of the population who are like the canaries in the coal mine and who are creating angst on the part of people living in Canada who don’t like to see it and want it to change but don’t really know how to do it. It’s something that needs a plan that is in concert with everything else that’s being done about deeply affordable housing. Could each of you just comment on that please?
Mr. Lee: From my end, I’m not an expert on how to house people who have complex mental and other health challenges, so I would defer on that, but in a macroeconomic sense, if we are building large amounts of new housing supply that is on a nonmarket model so it will ultimately be much more affordable than what we have available right now, that’s going to prevent people from falling into homelessness down the road. A really big part of the challenge is that it’s not always the same population of people who are homeless. People cycle in and out. It is a heterogenous population, and I don’t have the answers for one best pathway, but we do know that it requires more intensive levels of support. If we can do that on one end while having the supply available to prevent homelessness in the future, then, over the course of a decade or a generation, I think it is possible to eradicate homelessness in Canada.
Ms. Whitzman: Senator Kingston, I would agree with what Mr. Lee had to say. Finland has managed to largely eradicate homelessness over a generation.
This answer is fairly simple. It’s bilateral agreements. These kinds of services are generally funded by provinces and territories. The Canada Health Act sets out minimum standards and has proven to be a useful tool for bilateral agreements between the federal government giving money in return for basic levels of service. That needs to be incorporated in the next generation of bilateral agreements that are currently being formulated by the federal government. I’m doing some work for the Federal Housing Advocate on what would be in those bilateral agreements to ensure that, if the federal government puts money in the infrastructure and in the capital costs, then suitable operating costs to provide essential supports comes from provinces and territories. What happens if provinces and territories don’t play? In that case, the money goes to municipalities and regions to pay for those essential services. Really, it doesn’t have a complicated answer. The federal government has the greatest powers. It does have the ability to use its spending powers appropriately to ensure that those services are provided. It just hasn’t done that.
[Translation]
Senator Hébert: Ms. Whitzman, at the beginning of your remarks, you talked about the failures of past programs and the fact that the goals had not been met. What do you think it would take to succeed this time?
I’d like to hear from Mr. Lee afterwards, but if there were three essential elements or three or four things that absolutely had to be put in place if we want to succeed, what would they be?
[English]
Ms. Whitzman: There are a couple of aspects to the answer, Senator Hébert. One of them is really clear targets. The federal government has been talking about aggregate supply targets, but it needs to have non-market targets. One target that has been recommended is 20% of all housing being non-market by 2050. That’s been recommended by the National Housing Council, by the Community Housing Transformation Centre, et cetera. It worked in France. In France, in year 2000, the national government created targets for all municipalities of 20%. In 2016, it raised those targets for a number of municipalities to 25%. Paris voluntarily took on a target of 30%. Those targets are being met. If you have targets not just of aggregate supply but the supply that is most needed, and if you have it linked to infrastructure financing, which was also the case in France, it does work. France has doubled. In fact, as I said in my presentation, France has a much, much lower proportion of low-income tenants who are in housing need.
Mr. Lee: If we want to talk about targets, our back-of-the-envelope calculation in our alternative federal budget is 1 million new, non-market units over the course of a decade, at 100,000 per year, so 4,000 units is good start for Building Canada Homes, but it’s way too small relative to the overall needs. Again, if we want to supplement that, there is a lot the federal government can do on the infrastructure side — the costs currently being born by municipalities for things like water and sewer upgrades, and the development of the supply chains so that we’re maximizing the benefit to Canada, for Canadian workers, with Canadian-manufactured products going into these buildings. If we think about it in that scale, a million homes, that’s a moonshot and that’s a generational investment, but 4,000 units next year or whenever they are completed is far from that.
Senator Dalphond: You have spoken about various models, but who is managing these units, these 25% units? Is it the city? Is it some department or the health authorities, or is it run under a co-operative model like what is being proposed here?
Ms. Whitzman: In France, Senator Dalphond, it’s mostly done by HLM, which are municipal housing authorities. That has traditionally been a strength in France. There are some really good municipal and regional public housing authorities. Two thirds of the non-market housing in Canada is public housing. What we found in Austria, for instance, or in Denmark or in France is that it doesn’t really matter, to some extent, whether it’s a co-operative, a non-market association or a public housing authority. What matters is that they are good developers and they are good managers. The short answer to your question is that in France, it’s mostly public housing, including the supportive housing. In Canada, it might be, depending on the context, a combination. Whoever is doing a good job should be supported.
Mr. Lee: There is a lot of scope for the non-profit sector in the management of housing. Certainly, in British Columbia, where I’m from, that is largely the case, but there are some areas where they could be managed directly by the public sector as well. The core piece is the non-market or non-profit model so that when units turn over or as they are built, they only need to cover the break-even costs of that development. They are not seeking market rents. It’s that dynamic that tends to be pushing people into more precarious housing situations.
Senator Dalphond: There is a tendency when it’s managed by the government or the city that the management costs go up. I think what has been proposed in Toronto is a non-profit corporation that will do the management of the projects once completed.
Mr. Lee: Yes. I think a diversity of models is good. I don’t think you would want everything managed by one entity. To some extent, you could have some level of competition for contracts and ensure that’s twinned with proper accountability and transparency measures for the purposes of auditing those units.
Senator Dalphond: Thank you.
Senator MacAdam: Ms. Whitzman, in your report Scaling up affordable housing through a “Build Canada Homes” proposal published in August of 2025, you note that Austria’s non-market housing is often cited as a global model of cost-based, mixed-income housing that effectively serves low-income households. Roughly 60% of residents live in non-market housing, either municipal or provided by limited-profit housing associations. What lessons from Austria’s non-market housing system could be used in the Canadian context?
Ms. Whitzman: Thank you, Senator MacAdam. It’s always very flattering to know that my reports are being read. I’m happy to send a copy of both the Maytree report, which is fairly recent, and the report that I did for the housing advocate.
The main lesson from Austria is that Vienna started building public housing in the 1920s, and it has continued to build and keep in good repair its public housing to the point where Austria only spends about 0.5% of its GDP on housing. To answer a question asked earlier by Senator Marshall, which I didn’t get a chance to fully answer, when you look at France, which has been doing its own moonshot, doubling its non-market housing from a much higher rate than Canada, they spend 2% of their GDP. England spends 1.4% of its GDP on housing. Canada spends about 0.1% of its GDP on housing.
What both Mr. Lee and I have been talking about tonight is if we’re serious about the housing crisis, then we need to scale up non-market housing, and that will take a generational and transformative investment, which is what Prime Minister Carney has been talking about, but the money behind it in this current budget is not transformative or generational when it comes to housing. It’s a good idea to test out the waters with Build Canada Homes, but my hope would be, within a year or two, that the number of acquisitions, the amount of new build, and the number of renovations would be greatly scaled.
When Mr. Carney was a private citizen, he was part of a task force called More and Better Housing that had very ambitious numbers attached. Mr. Lee has been talking about 1 million units in 10 years. My report for the housing advocate and my book talks about 2 million non-market homes in 10 years. It will take that kind of thinking, not 4,000 homes in five years, which is the current target of Build Canada Homes.
Mr. Lee: It’s interesting that only about 4% of the housing stock in Canada is non-market. Almost all of that was built before 1995. If we recall 30 years ago, the federal government has retreated from its role in supporting the development of new and non-market housing. We have essentially had 30 years where not much was built at all. To the extent that we got new housing, it was largely through private condominiums and other private markets.
The legacy of those investments from the 1960s through to the 1990s is still with us today. That just buttresses Professor Whitzman’s remarks. We need to start building and just keep building, and never stop, for at least a generation. It’s taken us 30 years to get into this mess. We will not get out of it in just a couple of years with a few units. We really need a dedicated effort. The federal government has to underline that when it comes to things like homelessness and the needs spanning across the country, because no province can do it on its own.
The Chair: Thank you, witnesses. It’s been very helpful and very interesting. I hope that we will have other opportunities to have a meeting with you, I hope in person. It would be a pleasure. Thank you.
Mr. Lee: Thank you very much.
Ms. Whitzman: Thanks for the opportunity.
[Translation]
The Chair: Thank you to everyone. Our next meeting is planned to take place on November 18 at 9 a.m., to continue our study. Thank you to the whole team, namely the stenographers, the interpreters, the technicians and the pages; your work is always appreciated.
(The committee adjourned.)