Make the right to housing central to Build Canada Homes
Deputation on Bill C-20, An Act respecting the establishment of Build Canada Homes to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities (HUMA) on April 16, 2026
Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee on this matter.
Maytree is a Toronto-based human rights organization dedicated to advancing systemic solutions to poverty. We believe the most enduring way to keep people out of poverty is to reimagine and rebuild our public systems to respect, protect, and fulfill the economic and social rights of every person in Canada.
In 2019, the National Housing Strategy Act declared that housing policy in Canada will be guided by the fundamental human right to housing. My remarks today will argue that the establishment of Build Canada Homes will further this important project.
Canada’s housing shortage is urgent and systemic, and solving it will require more than incremental policy change. However, our history proves that we can act quickly and decisively at scale when there is political will.
That is why Canada must treat the housing crisis as a nation-building project, comparable to populating the prairies or the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Solving big problems requires bold ideas and coordinated, large-scale federal leadership.
The establishment of Build Canada Homes represents an opportunity to bring this same approach to addressing today’s housing crisis.
Invest in housing on government-owned land
The past decade of Canadian housing policy has been an attempt to build more housing through a series of subsidies to private and non-profit housing developers. While this has had positive effects at the margins, it has failed to create new housing on a scale commensurate with the magnitude of the crisis.
The reason the government is reluctant to do what is necessary to build at scale is because there are real limits on how much the treasury can afford to spend to incentivize others to build.
That is why Maytree has recommended a different approach based on a simple fact of government accounting: Giving away land and money for housing depletes the treasury. Investing in housing on government-owned land grows the treasury by creating an asset on the government’s books that offsets the up-front investment. Government itself does not have to build or operate the housing – this can be contracted to those with expertise.
Consider, for example, if Build Canada Homes were to contract with non-market developers to build on government land, with the resulting housing managed by a non-profit provider. The government would retain ownership of the built asset, and depreciation costs would be offset by rental income remitted annually by the operator. Like a toll on a new bridge, those with homes pay rent to cover the expenses booked by the government over the life of the asset.
By removing or reducing the typical land and financing costs, and by eliminating profit margins through partnerships with non-profit developers and operators, BCH could make these projects viable at rents well below market rates.
Other nations like Austria, Demark, Finland, and France have used similar direct build policies to create a sustainable stock of non-market rental housing.
This same model could also be applied to acquisitions of market buildings or conversions of other buildings to residential use, provided the government remains the owner of the asset.
Military bases are an obvious place to start. Our military needs hundreds of thousands of new housing units, and these projects are a perfect way to demonstrate we can deliver at scale through innovative techniques. Importantly, all expenditures would count toward Canada’s NATO targets.
And there’s no need to stop at what the military needs for its own use. About a dozen bases in Canada are close to major urban centres, as are many more defunct bases and stations. Build Canada Homes could build two or three times the needed housing and rent the surplus in the non-military market.
For these reasons, Maytree has for several years called for the creation of a government agency tasked with developing housing on public lands. That’s Build Canada Homes.
Already, $3.1 billion of the first $13 billion that will be invested through Build Canada Homes is earmarked for asset development. As the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer noted when examining Build Canada Homes’ spending plans: “Some cash expenditures do not affect the budgetary balance. … BCH asset development expenditures increase the value of federal properties by acquiring new properties or building new residential structures on those properties.”
This is an important start. It represents a new mechanism for building housing at scale without breaking the bank. But we need to be bolder. Rather than allocating $3.1 billion over five years, Maytree-funded research suggests we could increase this by a factor of 10 or more, deliver tens of thousands of new government-owned non-market rental units every year, and make no impact on Canada’s deficit.
We have the solutions. Build Canada Homes is the institution to manage these bold new initiatives.
Make explicit that Build Canada Homes will advance the right to housing
If there is a place where the legislation could be strengthened, it would be to make explicit that Build Canada Homes will advance the right to housing. The rights of the Crown, the rights of other agencies, and the rights of Build Canada Homes are all mentioned. Surely there is space to recognize the rights of each of us as well.
I mentioned earlier that the National Housing Strategy Act declares that the right to adequate housing is to guide Canada’s housing policy. For Canada to comply with its own legislation, we must apply a human rights lens to the daily work of managing housing policy and programs in Canada – including through Build Canada Homes.
Thus, we ask that the legislation be amended to include the progressive realization of the right to housing as an explicit and central component of the Build Canada Homes mandate. The practical implication of this change would be to make sure Build Canada Homes develops the capacity to apply human rights-based approaches to all aspects of its work, for example, through robust targets, metrics, and reporting that drive measurable results for priority populations.
Thank you for your time.