Budget 2026 shifts Liberal government’s language on home construction targets

The Canadian Press asked Housing Minister Gregor Robertson’s office whether Ottawa is abandoning its goal of doubling the annual pace of overall home building.

After repeated requests, his office pointed to a six-month-old statement given to The Canadian Press in May confirming that the government was still “working toward doubling homebuilding over the next decade.”

At the time, The Canadian Press had asked Robertson’s office about Ottawa’s commitment to the target because April’s spring economic update also lacked references to the goal.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Annette Ryan pointed out then that while the government’s fiscal update included plenty of talk about affordability supports, “no specific targets or metrics for the pace of home building were provided.”

Housing affordability has been a hot-button issue since the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw rents and resale prices rapidly escalate — boxing out many young Canadians trying to become homeowners.

On Tuesday, Robertson’s office pointed to statistics showing national housing starts are up more than 20 per cent since the pre-pandemic period, rental construction is setting a record pace and rents have trended lower over the past few years.

“Since forming government, we launched an ambitious national plan to focus our efforts and spur co-ordinated action between governments, homebuilders, and communities. We moved quickly to increase housing supply and improve access to safe, warm, affordable homes,” his office said.

MP Scott Aitchison, the Conservative housing critic, accused the Liberals of quietly dropping the promise to double home building and replacing it with the smaller non-market target.

“Their announcements and promises have turned into another Liberal housing illusion. Tripling the speed of slow is still unbearably slow and will not restore affordability,” Aitchison said in a statement to The Canadian Press.

“Canadians need homes they can afford, not more failed Liberal targets and broken promises.”

In its fall housing supply report, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. wrote that the country is entering a “new phase” where slowing population growth is leading to more balance in Canadian rental markets.

But the Crown corporation warned that the annual pace of housing starts is well short of levels needed to restore pre-pandemic affordability to the market in the next 10 years.

The CMHC’s “business-as-usual” forecast sees Canada breaking ground on 231,000 homes per year, which it estimates would leave the market up to 238,000 homes short of affordable levels by 2036.

Affordability will remain out of reach if Canada fails to take advantage of this moment to rapidly build housing supply ahead of the next surge in demand, the CMHC said.

Mike Moffatt, founding director of the Missing Middle Institute, said he always viewed the Liberals’ goal of doubling home building levels as a tough one to achieve. It would mean bringing the annual number of housing starts up to 500,000 in a given year, when Canada has so far topped out around 300,000.

Moffatt said the target may also be “excessive,” given that the government can effectively control the pace of population growth, which dictates how much supply is really needed to serve the Canadian market.

The headline number also doesn’t specify what kinds of homes Canada needs to build to actually meet Canadians’ needs, he added.

“I never loved the target. I felt it was probably too high and missed some important nuances,” Moffatt said.

The federal Liberals have instituted a number of policy changes aimed at stimulating home building since Prime Minister Mark Carney came to office in March 2025.

They include waiving the GST on many newly built homes, establishing new funds for local infrastructure and setting up Build Canada Homes, a new Crown corporation tasked with reversing years of lagging non-market home construction.

Budget 2026 proposed giving another $13 billion over 10 years to Build Canada Homes and pledged tens of billions of dollars over the coming decade to an effort to end homelessness across the country.

Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, also said he considered Ottawa’s original home building goal “more aspirational than realistic.”

“You can set a target, but do you have the capacity to meet those targets?” he said.

Yan said policies like the Housing Accelerator Fund and the Apartment Construction Loan Program have been “fairly successful” in getting more homes built, particularly on the rental side.

The Housing Accelerator Fund, which ties federal cash to pro-development policy changes, was one of Ottawa’s tools for addressing the fact that barriers to building often lie at the municipal level.

Many of the other levers for stimulating home building are also not directly in the federal government’s hands.

Building material costs have grown in response to U.S. tariffs, while a soft labour market is dampening buyer demand for new homes.

Interest rates — a critical factor for developers weighing the business case for a new build — are set independently by the Bank of Canada. The central bank delivered its first rate hike in more than three years last month and signalled more could be on the way.

Moffatt warned that many of the constraints holding back broader construction apply to social housing as well.

“There’s no non-market drywall, right? There’s no non-market lumber, there’s no non market electrician,” he said.

“A non-market social housing target is more in the government’s control, but it’s hardly a slam dunk.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2026.

Craig Lord, The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

Budget 2026 shifts Liberal government’s language on home construction targets

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