Build Canada Homes aims to build 4,000 housing units on federal land: Carney

OTTAWA – The newly created Build Canada Homes agency will oversee plans to build 4,000 homes on six federally owned sites, as part of a $13 billion agency budget to speed up affordable home building, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Sunday. 

Carney said that the $13 billion will offer financial incentives for builders to construct affordable homes and reduce upfront costs of affordable homebuilding.

Specific locations for the homes have not yet been announced, but Carney said they will be in Dartmouth, N.S., Longueuil, Que., Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg and Edmonton.

Construction is expected to begin on the first of these homes next year, according to a senior government official. 

“The core challenge present in the housing market is it’s just too hard to build,” Carney said at a press conference in Nepean. 

Carney said he’s asked his colleagues to identify land owned by government departments that can be used for housing, which will be added to the list of 88 properties on the Canada Land Bank that are available. 

He said this will “help lower costs for builders and most importantly, lower the rents and new home prices for Canadian families.”

Carney said that the new agency will also look to speed up the permitting process, by giving the “green light” to bulk projects. 

The government’s rental protection fund, which helps community housing groups purchase private rental units in order to keep them affordable, will continue under Build Canada Homes. 

The agency uses the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation definition of “affordable housing”, which is costing less than 30 per cent of pre-tax household income. 

The new agency will also include a $1 billion fund for transitional housing projects aimed to help people at risk of homelessness.

Build Canada Homes is meant to be the main agency overseeing affordable housing projects that involve the federal government. 

“Build Canada Homes will prioritize the use of cost-efficient and modern methods of construction, including factory build, modular and mass timber,” Carney said. 

Factory-build homes, he said, can be mass-produced in controlled settings and assembled in days, enabling construction to happen in the winter.

This will include a partnership with the Nunavut Housing Corporation to build some homes off site. The partnership with Build Canada Homes is expected to build 700 homes, about 30 per cent of which will be built off site and shipped to Nunavut, Carney said.

He said the agency will also adopt the federal government’s recently announced “Buy Canadian” policy, which is meant to prioritize the use of Canadian materials and inputs as a way to help bolster the economy in the face of U.S. tariffs.

The agency’s CEO, Ana Bailão, is a former Toronto city councillor and deputy mayor who has served on the board of Toronto Community Housing. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 14, 2025.