Front Burner - Can Canada’s housing minister make homes cheaper?

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

The Liberal government has launched its $13-billion agency called “Build Canada Homes” which Prime Minister Mark Carney says will supercharge housing construction across the country.Today, Housing Minister Gregor Robertson talks to host Jayme Poisson about Canada’s housing affordability crisis, how the Liberal government is meeting the challenges around it, and why he thinks he’s the right person for the job.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

I never thought the enemy would be inside my own ranks. Hi, I'm Sandra Puraugh. I was Canada's first female infantry officer, and being the first man, I had to fight some pretty tough battles on and off the battlefield. You know they're going to use this to say women can't be in combat arms. If this picture gets out, it would damage the men who are bravely serving this country. Discover my true story on screen for the first time. See Outstanding, only in Canadian theaters on September 26th.

This is a CBC podcast. Hey, everybody. I'm Jamie Poisson. Today, my guest is Housing Minister Gregor Robertson. Earlier this week, the liberal government launched a new $13 billion agency called Build Canada Homes, which, according to them, will super. charge housing construction across the country. You may remember from the election campaign this government has promised to double the pace of housing construction over the next decade. I don't need to tell you guys how bad it is out there. We are seeing home prices 10 times the median household income in cities like Toronto and Vancouver, six to seven times the median income in

medium cities like Halifax or London. A healthy housing economy is three to four times the median household income. Rent has skyrocketed well beyond inflation. Nearly 40% of renters are paying more than 30% of their income on housing above the affordability threshold. I have no idea how you save for anything, let alone a down payment to buy something when you have to do that. I'm going to ask the minister whether his government is on track to reach their ambitious promises and why he thinks he is the guy for the job. Minister Robertson, thank you so much for coming on to Front Burner. Great to be with you.

So before we talk about Build Canada homes, I would be curious to hear from someone like you, a former mayor, the current housing minister. How do you think we got to this point of crippling housing unaffordability? Well, it's taken decades to get to the current predicament where, you know, lots of young people can't afford to get into the housing market, you know, struggling to to find homes. That's something that affects my kids and, you know, a whole younger generation now. Homelessness at record levels across Canada is, you know, really, really hard, I think, for all of us to be seeing. That's a real, real signal of a housing system that's not delivering

when there are people actually living outside and shelters at record numbers. But it's really across the whole spectrum of housing, there's just big gaps, not enough supply of the right kind of affordable housing for people on limited incomes. And that's what we have to change. It's decades of not building enough of that housing. Yeah. I know people here talk about that,

but also restrictive zoning and nimbism, the role of investors, population. growth, outpacing housing growth, low interest rates, tax policy like tax-free capital gains that turned housing into an investment. Where would you put those? Like what factors are most to blame in your estimation? Well, the biggest culprit is ensuring we are building enough of the right supply. So people talk about we need more supply and there's been lots of supply at the higher end of the market that many people can't afford. We have not been building enough supply that is supported by government investment

or is on government land, has some federal or provincial or city or indigenous government government helping to reduce the cost to get the housing built. And we don't have enough of that. We have, you know, half of the average across the OECD of our peer countries. And so we've got to catch up on that first and foremost. There are other changes we can continue to make with banking and mortgages and the finance side. But I think first and foremost, the big challenge is building more of the more affordable supply of homes at big scale across Canada. And that's why we launched Build Canada homes. Well, let's talk about Build Canada

homes. $13 billion has been earmarked for this agency. What exactly is this agency supposed to do? and what will the money be spent on? Build Canada homes in a nutshell is a one-stop shop for the federal government to focus on building affordable homes. And that is a combination of using federal land and using all the tools that we have as a federal government. It's investing with that $13 billion, investing a significant amount of that in financing affordable home. builders. And that can mean a combination of private sector builders with non-profit operators. That can be co-ops. That can be workforce housing for the missing middle. It can be student housing. Anything that brings the cost down below market. And we can help finance that using that

$13 billion envelope. And thirdly, to modernize the industry, our home building industry has lagged far behind, again, many other countries, pure countries in Europe and Asia, where we are still building over 95% of our homes are built on site. And the metaphor I like is it, can you imagine building a car in your driveway? Our homes are really the last thing that we build on site, bring all the different pieces of the puzzle together, the walls and the floors and the kitchens and the bathrooms that can be manufactured, just like we manufacture everything else that we have. We need to modernize our industry and support the companies that are doing that to bring down the cost of our homes. That'll help us with affordability as well. And it also help

we can build a lot faster because we can build year-round in factories and then assemble those homes much faster on site. Well, because wrapped up in this is the announcement of these 4,000 factory-built homes, right, expected in the next year, they're going to be on these six sites in Dartmouth, Long Way, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. Who are these homes for, right? Like, people with what kinds of income? Are they renting them? Are they buying them? Now, these will be rental homes, yeah. And great question, because that's ultimately, you know, these homes are all for people who have challenges getting into the housing market. I think most of these homes on, government land on federal land will be a mix of affordable.

So below market rents, we may be able to do some co-ops on those sites. We may be able to do some workforce housing, so we can have teachers or nurses who work in that part of the community can live close to where they work. So I think we'll be looking at, you know, all kinds of proposals now going forward to get more affordable housing built in communities, all different. sizes, too, not just those are an initial six on the federal land. We want to be building in communities all across the country, large and small. This program, please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to be designed to meet the needs

of lower, lower income people, lower income families, which is certainly needed, of course. But But what about those who would be considered part of the middle class? Because we know this is a big problem, too. Can you tell me what your government is doing to help those people? Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, interestingly, the Prime Minister referenced this the other day when we were launching Build Canada Homes. That when you look at affordable housing and providing some affordability in a housing project, that need is for almost half of Canadians that are on low to middle income.

Given the housing markets and how much they have skyrocketed over the years, almost half of Canadians have some need to have lower rents, some subsidy. That can be anything from a co-op to social housing. But right up to middle market, we think we'll be able to build a lot of housing that has a mix of market and below market rents. So in one larger project, you can have some people who can afford it, who are paying above market, and others who are below market. And many cases now, you know, it's all everyone's mixed up.

You don't know who's who in terms of their incomes. But that's in terms of the social dynamics, much healthier way to build communities and make sure that these buildings, these homes are available to everybody. And regardless of your income, we want to make sure we're doing as much of that as we can. And that's where the private sector can build a lot and invest a lot because there's a stream of rent income that will pay down the financing.

So we think we can get a lot of scale from that. I notice that out of these six sites, only one is in Toronto. None are actually in BC. Do you think that there should be more attention given to, population dense areas like Toronto and Vancouver and given that's where so many Canadians live and also given that housing is the most expensive in these two cities I think they're they rival only L.A. in North America, one, two, and three, the top three spots. Yeah, absolutely. As I said, we're going to be building in every big city and in communities all across Canada.

These initial sites of federal land are one tiny slice of the overall Build Canada Homes project. Certainly the needs are very high in Vancouver and Toronto because of the affordability crunch that both cities have felt. So we'll be looking at opportunities and partnerships. We want to see partners come forward that have private sector builders and non-market housing providers and leveraging public land whenever possible. When do you think those announcements? will start to be made. I'm hoping we have another set of announcements later this fall. We've got to go into the budget cycle.

We've got these initial ones planned. We've got actually 700 homes planned with the government of Nunavut and in many of the small communities there as another example. And as I mentioned, a billion dollars into supportive bridge housing as well. So those are just examples of the types of projects. So I'm sure you've heard Pierre Pahliav and criticisms coming from the Conservative Party and others that say that Build Canada Homes just creates a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy. I put forward a bill in the House of Commons called the Build Homes and Not Bureaucracy Act. Can heedians count afford to put food on the table, let alone pay for the liberal's bureaucracy when it comes to housing.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister introduced a fourth $13 billion housing bureaucracy to build. Wait for it. 4,000 homes. It took six months, for example, just to set it up. I've seen people point to the example of the Canada Infrastructure Bank, an agency that was established by the Trudeau government in 2017, that struggled to make deals in its early years and basically couldn't get its money out the door. How is Bill Canada homes going to avoid that kind of sluggishness?

Yeah, well, that's the sluggishness is definitely something. thing I won't tolerate is the minister responsible and having being a mayor needing to move fast in real time in our cities and communities. We have Anna Bailow, who is a city councilor in Toronto and also has worked in the private sector, is going to be the CEO. So both of us are grounded in the reality of how fast you need to build it at the city level and how we do that more effectively. We're creating a one-stop shop for affordable housing in the government of Canada, which hasn't existed before. And this is really bringing focus to a team here that can use all the federal tools to make sure we're building faster and more affordably across the country.

So we're going to see, I think, a dramatic disruption to the pattern in the past of too much bureaucracy, too much red tape and different levels of government not cooperating. I'm hoping we get a Team Canada approach here. We're able to work with partners at all levels of government. And we have a tiger team here in Ottawa that can move very nimbly and make sure that we're getting homes built. That's what counts. I never thought the enemy would be inside my own ranks. Hi, I'm Sandra Puraugh. I was Canada's first female infantry officer,

and being the first man, I had to fight some pretty tough battles on and off the battlefield. You know they're going to use this to say women can't be in combat arms. If this picture gets out, it would damage the men who are bravely serving this country. Discover my true story on screen for the first time. See Outstanding, only in Canadian theaters on September 26th. for my business? The timing's right. Everything's in motion. Economy's changing. It's all about automation, AI. So I said to myself, take the plunge. Yes, I need a loan, but I also need a hand from a partner

who's truly working with me, helping me, no matter what comes next. Not later. Now. Get ready for what's next. With BDC, you get financing and advice adapted to your projects. Discover how at bdc.c.ca.ca.c. Advising. Know how. know these are 4,000 and as you said, you're looking to scale. One of the numbers I've heard is 45,000 units, right? Your government promised in the last election campaign to double the rate of housing starts in this country in the next decade to about 500,000 a year. Correct. It was an enormous number, right? And that would be hard to do on a regular day. The latest MCMHC data says that growth in housing starts has been flat in the first half of this year.

I know the picture is a little bit complex in cities like Calgary, Edmonton, and Montreal, homes are going up sort of at record pace or historical average. But in the big expense of cities like Toronto and Vancouver, housing starts have essentially slowed down the condo market in and around Toronto and Metro Vancouver is essentially collapsing. So given all of that, do you really think that you can double the rate of housing construction in a decade? Do you think that that's even remotely realistic? I think it's going to take years to scale up to that. We've talked about getting up to that level in the decade ahead. And really, it's what's necessary. That's the gap that has emerged over the last 30 years.

We have this several million homes behind that have not been built and that basically most of them need to be in the affordable end of the spectrum rather than expensive condos. So I think the good news is we have a private sector in Vancouver and Toronto that are not building expensive condos now because that market is no longer functioning well. And we have an opportunity for them to build more affordable housing. And we need to put them to work doing that. We've got to pull out all the stops now to build as much affordable housing as we can in Canada and get it up to that level. That's the sustainable level that we need to be achieving to keep up with population growth and make sure there's enough affordable housing. Yeah. So, I mean, look, like, how long do you think it's going to take to ramp up to that number?

CMHC, I think, is saying 480,000 a year until 2035 to run. restore affordability, like this has to happen quickly, right? And just listening to your answer, it did not sound like that. Oh, no. I'm, I'm as impatient as it gets on this. And that comes from many years of being very challenged, 10 years working at City Hall and not having much support from federal or provincial governments for most of my time. What I saw towards the end of my time as the government's all changed, federally and provincially, there was support, and we could build way phenomenally faster. And when you have all the levels of government agreeing, we're going to move fast. We're going to move faster on approvals. We're going to standardize the designs of homes.

We're going to use manufacturers to build to those designs. We're going to finance affordable home builders at an unprecedented scale. I think we have a real opportunity with the coordination and alignment right now and we've got to pull out all the stops. We've got to do everything we can to move faster on this so Canadians can get the homes that they need. Your government made some other promises in the election I haven't heard very much about since. One of them was to work to cut development charges to find a way to compensate municipalities or support them to cut development charges in half. This would obviously, the argument is make building cheaper and homes cheaper. Where is that promise? Will it be in the upcoming budget?

We are hard at work on cutting development charges. That's a huge challenge in Toronto and Vancouver in particular, with cities not being able to afford to invest in the housing infrastructure and using development charges to pay for that, the water and the wastewater systems that have to go in place. That's one that's on the hot list for this fall. Do you know if it's going to be in the budget? Will it be in the budget?

Yeah. I don't know what it'll be in the budget. budget. I just know that I'm tasked to deliver that in these weeks ahead. The second promise was this tax provision that was used in the 70s that would encourage investment in small residential buildings and experts like Mike Moffitt at the Missing Middle Initiative, for example, argued that this would attract those kind of mom and pop investors. Instead of them buying up existing stock, they would put their capital in these smaller residential projects. Where is this? Will this be in the budget?

That is another promise that we've made in terms of delivering what's effectually known as MIRBs, a MIRB's program. I was trying to avoid saying the term MIRBs, but I'm glad that you did. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's just credited with successfully delivering a ton of rental housing back in the 60s and into the 70s. And I've been hearing builders ask for the MIRB's program to come back in Vancouver for decades now. I can't speak to what's in the budget, but definitely it's on our list of pieces we want to deliver. We think it has enormous potential.

I totally agree with Mike Moffat on that, that there is real potential to unleash a whole bunch more housing from Canadians at all. levels of investment, who can roll their capital into, even if that's just adding a laneway house or an accessory dwelling unit, as we call it in the business, or add basement suites or turn their home into a fourplex. Those investments and the bigger scale, MIRB type investments with small apartment buildings, we think that has enormous potential. Related to this, I wanted to get an update from you on the accelerator fund. So this was something that the last liberal government introduced, and it essentially tied money doled out from the feds to the municipalities and encouraged them to relax zoning to speed up approvals, right? Is the accelerator fund going to continue?

the housing accelerator fund is chugging along we've got 241 communities from large to small from Toronto to smaller communities across the country who have made commitments to access that accelerator funding and basically add a lot speed up the housing that's being built in their communities or city we don't have a next phase of funding a approved at this time. So we're basically tracking and working with communities and cities across the country as they make progress. Well, on that tracking point, I remember the prime minister said that one of one of the goals was to post what municipalities were doing online publicly, like how they were meeting those goals tied to those funds. And I can't seem

to see it anywhere. And am I missing missing that? That piece is something. still in development. We don't have a public posting, but I think with all of this, we do want to be really transparent about how we're doing, how we're progressing with these investments. These are the most significant investments in housing. And this goes back a couple of years, and we're basically doubling up on it now with our new government. We've got some tracking in place. It's not public yet. We're still midstream in the program. We definitely want to be transparent about the results. Yeah, it would be helpful to see. And then also what I wanted to ask you related to the accelerator fund is, are you willing to pull the funding if they don't meet these

goals? So back in June, Toronto voted against the construction of six plexes, as I'm sure you're well aware. And it was a condition of the deal with Ottawa. Are you going to remove the funding? Yeah, that's another piece. And if not, why not, right? Yeah. Yeah, actually, we've, we've had to come in as the new housing minister and play the heavy with, with some of our cities and communities that are, are not delivering. Toronto has a unique situation where that was one of 35 commitments that Toronto made in their

housing accelerator proposal and then you know the ensuing decision it's a big one but they um I mean overall I think Toronto as their numbers are 61,000 new housing units that have to be delivered as part of the accelerator fund they actually are well on track for that 61,000 regardless of the six Plex. So they've got until January to work through their plan of how they meet their commitments. And we're doing this with all of the cities and communities. We're reviewing their progress, checking in with them. I want to give them all a chance to deliver. Make sure they follow through on their commitments. And, you know, it's a, it's critical overall to see the housing supply increase. That's the whole purpose of this. So we want to see, we want to see that

delivered through their commitments. Before we go, I do want to loop back to where we started, which was the discussion about how we got here. And you were mayor of Vancouver, as you've mentioned, between 2008 and 2018, the housing affordability crisis really exploded during this time in the greater Vancouver area, the average price of a single family and semi-detached home rose 179% across the region. The anger about housing was, I think it's fair to say, part of the reason why your party got kind of wiped out after a decade in power. And when it comes to housing, do you have any regrets

about your time as mayor? And if so, what are they? Yeah, good question. Well, it was a really, really challenging time in Vancouver and, you know, Toronto's lived through a comparable nightmare with housing affordability. And unfortunately, you know, we've seen that across the country now in communities of all shapes and sizes. Vancouver got hit first. I think the biggest piece I learned was it takes partnership of all levels of government to actually tackle housing affordability and we were kind of left alone in the dark there. It was kind of like, oh, that's a Vancouver problem. You guys, you know, you guys are different out there on the West Coast. So there really wasn't support or recognition that this was the beginning of a pattern

that was going to impact the entire country. And we learned a ton just having to be resourceful and do everything that we could as a city from an empty homes tax to rental only zoning to incentives that we brought in for rental housing just as a city. We did everything that we could, but that, you know, was like trying to stop a tsunami. Right. And that change. Some of that was investment from offshore. Some of it was related to just not being able as a city. You don't have the fiscal capacity to invest in social housing. But you did receive critiques, you know, people who felt like you could have done more with the levers that you had critiques that you were either too cozy with developers during your time in office or that too much of the housing were luxury condos that catered to the ultra-rich, that you didn't act quickly enough in calling out the role of foreign ownership, that you didn't push hard enough for rezoning that would have allowed higher density across the city, not just like laneway houses. And I just, I wonder how you would respond to those very specific critiques.

And if you would do anything differently. Sure. And I think it's an important question because now you are at the top of this, you know, very important file for a lot of people in this country. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, I'll stand by my record any day. If people want to go through and do the forensic audit of exactly what we did, given the circumstances, we pulled out all the stops. and we were very limited as a city in terms of what we could do. And by the political blowback, there was a lot of pressure,

a lot of NIMBY pressure that was pushing back against more density in many neighborhoods. We were typically under most pressure to not redevelop parts of the city. We tried to do everything we could, but that doesn't work at the scale of a city. And when you don't have a provincial or federal government committed to building affordable housing and investing significantly in doing that with all the tools they have available, you just can't solve it at a local level. It's the most expensive thing we have across the country, whether it's individually or collectively. That means everybody has to step up and lead and invest to make sure we actually get the affordable housing we need built.

Okay. Minister Robertson, thank you very much for coming by. My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me on. All right, so before we go today, I just want to note that after our interview with Minister Robertson, his office sent as a clarification on the homes that are set to be built by the Build Canada Homes Agency. they won't only be rental homes. His office says that there will be some flexibility on that front. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thank you so much for listening and talk to you tomorrow.