Carney’s Two Housing Fixes—and the Missing Rulebook

Forty-eight days.

That is how long it took the Carney administration to announce two major housing agreements—first with British Columbia, and then with Toronto.

From a distance, they look like versions of the same programme. Billions of dollars. Thousands of homes. Ottawa standing beside another level of government and promising to address the housing crisis.

Look more closely and they are not the same at all.

British Columbia has homes that have already been built but cannot be sold at the prices developers expected. It also has municipalities where development charges and inadequate water, road and wastewater infrastructure are making new construction more expensive.

Toronto has a different problem. Thousands of rental homes have already been planned, permitted and approved. The projects are not being held back primarily by zoning or a lack of land. They are being held back because the financing no longer works.

The Carney administration is applying a different tool to each failure.

In British Columbia, Ottawa and the province announced C$3.2 billion for housing infrastructure and lower development charges, plus a C$284 million federal transfer to reduce construction barriers. They are also considering a C$1.45 billion rent-to-own programme covering 2,200 unsold condos.

The condo plan remains undefined. We do not know the units, purchase prices, ownership rules or affordability terms. The test is simple: buy at a hard discount and it becomes a public opportunity; overpay and it becomes a developer bailout.

Toronto is more straightforward.

Ottawa announced up to C$2.7 billion to unlock 18 identified projects containing more than 5,600 rental homes. More than C$1.8 billion consists of low-cost federal loans for private purpose-built rental projects. Another C$310 million will support non-market housing on city-owned land, while as much as C$600 million has been reserved for additional projects that become ready. Toronto is contributing public land and approximately C$704 million in funding and financial incentives.

More than 4,500 of those homes are expected to begin construction before the end of the year.

So one programme attempts to clear a frozen inventory and repair the infrastructure beneath the housing market. The other supplies financing to projects that are already approved but cannot get out of the ground.

That is what makes these 48 days important.

The story is not that the Carney government simply announced more than six billion dollars for housing. Much of the Toronto package consists of repayable loans, while the British Columbia figures include provincial matching and infrastructure spending. Adding the headlines together conceals more than it reveals.

The real story is that the administration has begun treating the housing crisis as a collection of different market failures rather than one national shortage with one national solution.

So what exactly is the problem facing Canada on the housing front?

There are many layers to it. But if we drill down to the two most important line items, this is where we arrive.

Canada started approximately 259,000 homes in 2025. By June 2026, the annualized construction rate had fallen to about 239,000.

CMHC estimates that Canada needs between 430,000 and 480,000 housing starts every year through 2035 to restore affordability—nearly twice its present construction rate.

The country is moving in the wrong direction. CMHC currently forecasts housing starts falling from 259,000 in 2025 to approximately:

• 241,000 in 2026;

• 223,000 in 2027

• 212,000 in 2028.

So the problem is not merely that Canada has failed to reach the required construction rate. The distance between what it needs to build and what it is likely to build is getting larger.

Canada has vacant apartments and a housing shortage at the same time.

That sounds contradictory. It is not. Many of the available units are in the wrong price category.

New rentals are expensive because land, materials, labour, financing, development charges, infrastructure and approval delays are all expensive. A newly constructed apartment therefore has to command a high rent before the project becomes financially viable.

Those expensive units can remain vacant while lower- and moderate-income renters struggle to find somewhere suitable to live.

That is what CMHC’s current rental data show. Vacancies are rising primarily in newer, higher-priced buildings. Asking rents are beginning to fall in several major cities. But older, cheaper and family-sized units remain much tighter, while rents paid by many existing tenants continue to rise.

Canada therefore does not simply have too few homes. It has too few homes at prices supported by Canadian incomes.

The private market built units it cannot rent or sell at the prices it expected. Households still cannot afford those units at the prices being demanded. And developers cannot substantially reduce those prices without making the next project impossible to finance.

That is the trap.

Canada needs more homes. But it also needs the right homes, at the right prices.

The direction is reasonable. The structure is not yet good enough.

The government is not sitting still. Two significant housing interventions in 48 days provide clear evidence that it is trying. More importantly, the government did not force the same solution onto two different problems.

There is an institutional structure—Build Canada Homes, CMHC and the relevant provincial and municipal agencies. What is missing is a clear and publicly visible framework explaining why a particular intervention was selected, who selected it, what alternatives were considered and how success will be measured.

That is where the real concern begins.

The British Columbia announcement was immediately attacked as a developer bailout, even though the government had not disclosed the acquisition prices—the number required to determine whether the accusation was true. The Toronto announcement attracted far less political attention, partly because the trade negotiations consumed the headlines.

But the Toronto programme uses the state’s balance sheet to help private projects proceed. Most of its headline value consists of low-cost federal loans, and most of its homes will not be deeply affordable. And right there we have an opportunity.

Why isn’t the government focusing more on affordability?. Why not first fund projects that are at bottom of the rental pricing pyramid? That is also where it can get the most volume. This is something we want the government to consider.

The hate wing will always find a slogan.

If the government does nothing while the market deteriorates, it will be condemned as a do-nothing government. If it intervenes, the intervention will be called a bailout. Unless public policy directly transfers money into the pockets of a few billionaires, that wing will invent a reason to oppose it.

We should not allow the screaming to determine housing policy.

But neither should hostility from the opposition become an excuse for the government to avoid scrutiny.

The public therefore has a right to know:

• What precise market failure is each programme correcting?

• Who selected the projects and beneficiaries?

• How much support is a grant, a loan, an equity investment or a waived public charge?

• What affordability conditions will apply, and for how long?

• Who will own the homes?

• How much public capital can be recovered and reinvested?

• What will each completed home cost the public?

• What happens if a project fails?

• Where will the results be published?

So yes, the Carney government is broadly on the right track. It is identifying different failures and attempting to use different tools against them. That is better than announcing one national slogan and pretending every housing market works the same way.

But Canada now needs a common standard governing those different interventions: transparent selection, measurable affordability, published contracts, recoverable public capital and regular performance reporting.

The answer is not one housing programme for the entire country. It is one national standard for many local programmes.

Let us tell you something in secret.

For at least the next two years, The Concis begins with a bias in favour of anything that actually builds.

Not announcements. Not strategies. Not another fund that moves money between government accounts. Real construction. Homes, factories, infrastructure and the supply chains required to support them.

Why?

Because Canada does not need only housing. It needs jobs, investment, demand for Canadian steel and lumber, and enough economic momentum to withstand the pressure coming from Washington until at least January 2029.

That does not mean blank cheques or protection for failed investments. Build—but negotiate hard, publish the contracts, measure the results and account for every dollar.

But build.

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