New homes are constructed in Ottawa on Aug. 14, 2023. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick
It may take until 2033 for the federal government’s measures to spur housing construction to show their full impact, according to an internal Finance Department memo.
The estimate was cited in a Jan. 30 briefing note to Deputy Housing Minister Paul Halucha, which was recently obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter through the access to information regime. It warned that lengthy development timelines, rising construction costs, and labour shortages are slowing progress.
The report noted residential development can take up to seven years for multi-unit projects, including three to five years for planning and another year or two for construction.
“This often results in a timing lag between when a project actually begins and when it appears in housing starts and completions data particularly for large multi-unit projects like rentals and condos,” said the briefing note.
The Liberals pledged during the 2025 federal election to double Canada’s residential construction rate to at least 500,000 new homes per year over the next decade to improve affordability.
The report said new builds would likely peak in 2030 at less than 262,000 housing starts. It said delays were being compounded by inflation in Canada’s construction sector of 3.3 percent annually, as well as “declining productivity and labour gaps.”
There is also a delay between when construction begins and when the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) records a housing start, as “this only occurs once the foundation or concrete footing is fully poured which can be a year or more into construction for large multi-unit projects,” the report noted.
Housing starts increased from 227,697 in 2024 to
. The CMHC projected in July that there will be 241,000 starts in 2026, followed by 223,400 in 2027, and 211,900 in 2028.
The CMHC noted in an August report that the annual pace of housing starts in July fell by five percent compared to June, from 240,773 to 229,074 units. The agency said construction finished on a total of 19,773 units in July, which was up 8.1 percent from June.
The federal government has introduced several measures to spur new housing construction, including launching Build Canada Homes with an initial $13 billion in funding over five years. The agency has advanced six federal land projects toward construction, with the sites expected to provide up to 4,000 factory-built homes.
A Parliamentary Budget Officer
released in December 2025 estimated that Build Canada Homes would create 26,000 housing units over five years. The report noted that 13,000 of the new housing units would be for low-income households.
