PBO: Carney housing plan will only deliver 26,000 homes over five years

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s promise of building half a million homes a year has been exposed as a massive failure.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s promise of building half a million homes a year has been exposed as a massive failure. The Parliamentary Budget Officer confirms Ottawa will only deliver a paltry 26,000 new houses over the next five years, falling drastically short of what Canadians were promised.

The Build Canada Homes project, launched by the Carney government in September, is likely to bring only slight relief to the country’s housing crisis, according to a new report published Tuesday by interim Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) Jason Jaques.

The new federal agency intends to commit $13 billion to housing through financing, loans and acquisitions over a five-year period from 2025 to 2030.

One billion dollars will go to contributions for transitional and support housing, while $5.4 billion is slated for grants, contributions and loan concessions to supply affordable housing. Another $625 million is allocated to help community housing providers acquire rental apartments.

However, the funding Ottawa allocated for the program is set to “decline 56 per cent, from $9.8 billion in 2025 26 to $4.3 billion in 2028-29 due to the expiry of funding for existing programs and cuts set out in Budget 2025.”

“Build Canada Homes should be expected to make a modest contribution toward housing supply and affordability within the broader context of a large decline in support for housing affordability,” reads the report.

The PBO also noted the Carney government has yet to lay out “an overall plan” to achieve their housing goal.

The report estimates “that the program will add about 26,000 units over five years, representing a 2.1 per cent increase in housing completions relative to our baseline projection.”

The PBO calculates that Build Canada Homes has “sufficient funding to create approximately 13,000 new units of housing affordable for low-income households.”

This is a result of Budget 2025’s plan to cut funding from the already declining spending profile of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

“This would mean not only that existing programs like the Canada Housing Benefit and Affordable Housing Fund would be allowed to expire as scheduled, but also that further cuts would be made impacting CMHC’s capacity to sustain existing social housing,” the report said.

Additionally, funding for several other housing affordability programs, such as those under Indigenous Services Canada, Housing Infrastructure and Communities Canada and Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, are scheduled to expire over the next several years without any proposed renewal.

The PBO report also noted that Build Canada Homes plans to “lead the adoption of cost-effective methods of construction, specifically factory-built, modular, and mass timber housing.”

“It aims to do so through bulk procurement and financing and to achieve cost reductions of up to 20 per cent. Direct development by BCH represents 1,605 expected units per year, or a 0.6 per cent increase in housing completions relative to the PBO’s August 2025 baseline forecast.”