A coalition of development industry leaders is sounding the alarm about what is not included in
this week, suggesting the housing shortage will worsen due to a lack of programs to stimulate construction.
The Alliance of Major Town Centers, backed by the Building Industry and Land Development Association, said inaction would cost jobs as the construction sector pulls back from building new homes amid falling sales.
“Sales are evaporating across the country,” said Justin Sherwood, BILD’s chief operating officer. “As the (lack of) trading activity from previous years permeates the system, you will be faced with a situation where 100,000 people will lose their jobs.”
BILD considers the situation dire and believes that the government is too focused on
which is likely to decline as a result of today's sales shortfall, leading to fewer units built in the future.
Sales are down 82% since the start of the year.
81 per cent in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, 67 per cent in Vancouver, 40 per cent in Calgary and 33 per cent in Edmonton, the group said. Sales of condominium units in Montreal are down 75 percent.
Sherwood said his group is pushing to extend the GST/HST rebate not just to first-time homebuyers but to all buyers, and believes the federal government's budget language is moving away from a commitment to cut construction costs by 50 percent on housing.
There was also widespread disappointment that the budget made no mention of the Multi-Residential Residential Building Program, or MURB, a popular decades-old policy that the sector believes will recapitalize the industry.
Previous programs allowed investors to claim depreciation and certain other costs of an apartment building against unrelated income, effectively incentivizing the construction of rental apartments.
Sherwood estimates that the program helped finance the construction of approximately 195,000 apartments at a cost of $2.4 billion at the time through lost tax revenue.
“You will see a significant reduction in the number of new homes and essentially a lack of supply, which will set the stage for another surge in affordability in the future,” he said.
While Sherwood's group was disappointed, Canada's largest apartment landlord, Starlight Investments, sees budget growth potential that will give it reason to plan more development projects around planned infrastructure.
The announcement of the new fund should encourage his industry to build more multifamily buildings, although his company is already actively involved in development, said Howard Paskowitz, vice president of development and public relations for Starlight.
The Ottawa Strong Communities Fund, to be administered by Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, proposes $51 billion in funding over a decade starting in 2026-27.
Paskowitz said tying the project to municipal and provincial projects will help spur development. “Everything will depend on how it is implemented, and that's where you need strong coordination at all levels of government and the private sector,” he said. “Infrastructure is key because you can’t provide housing if you don’t know how to flush the toilets.”
Hopes that the sector would receive a demand-side boost from immigration were dashed by Ottawa, which said it would stabilize admissions of permanent residents to 380,000 until 2028 and cut admissions of new temporary residents from about 670,000 in 2025 to 385,000 in 2026.
“The biggest key to solving this crisis is increasing supply, and if you limit demand, that will obviously make a difference as well,” said Paskowitz, who said the right type of immigration will attract workers to build that housing.
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