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The federal government introduced legislation that would enshrine its housing agency as a Crown corporation on Thursday, giving it land acquisition authority as well as the ability to partner with private developers — as questions remain over the number of units it intends to build.
“We are making a generational decision that affordable housing is, and must remain, a top priority of the federal government, and that we play a key role, alongside local, provincial and territorial governments, in ensuring that everyone in Canada has a safe and affordable place to call home,” said Housing Minister Gregor Robertson in making the announcement.
Robertson said the existing Canada Lands Company, a Crown corporation that redevelops federal properties, would be folded into Build Canada Homes.
“The clear commitment our government is making here today is to build affordable housing, and this has tragically been ignored by both provincial and federal governments,” Robertson said.
No quota for units
Unclear in the legislation is how many units Build Canada Homes intends to actually build, or other performance indicators, something housing observers say they hope is coming soon.
“How do you measure success?” said Andy Yan, a professor of urban studies at Simon Fraser University.
“They clearly have talked about development … but what happens to operations and maintenance?”
Mike Moffatt, an economist at the Ivey Business School and the founding director of the Missing Middle Initiative, said benchmarks are necessary in order to measure the agency’s success or failure in a few years.
“It’s a large problem that Build Canada Homes has no key performance indicators of what it is trying to accomplish, not just on the number of homes, but at what price point?” he said.
“Are we building homes for single individuals, or for families?”
Carolyn Whitzman, a housing and social policy researcher at the University of Toronto, said she expects to see targets sometime soon, but was not surprised they are not in the legislation.
“My confident prediction is that in the next year there will be a new national housing strategy developed,” she said, and that is where benchmarks would appear.
Asked about a quota during the news conference, Robertson said the number of homes built depends on how much private capital they can bring in.
“So we’ll be pushing to attract as much private capital as possible, getting far more affordable housing built than in the typical model of just public funding,” he said.
No indication on opposition support
The Conservative Party, which has previously been critical of Build Canada Homes for adding a layer of bureaucracy to homebuilding, did not indicate whether it plans to support the bill.
“The legislation was just tabled. I look forward to studying it in detail and I look forward to discussing with colleagues and I look forward to participating in the debate,” said Conservative MP Garnett Genuis, who represents the Edmonton-area riding of Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan.
NDP housing critic Jenny Kwan criticized the bill for not defining the term “affordable housing,” also noting in a statement it “grants extraordinarily broad powers to Build Canada Homes, allowing it to finance and partner with virtually any person or entity, acquire and develop land, own and operate housing and invest in third-party ventures, all with minimal constraints and limited parliamentary oversight.”
She also said turning the agency into a Crown corporation “removes accountability from the minister of housing.”
Moffatt pointed out that independence could be valuable. He said any government agency could be susceptible to government interference, and Build Canada Homes would now have a layer of separation.
“You want an agency like Build Canada Homes, for instance, to be building homes where they’re needed the most, building homes where they can get the best deal possible, right? You want to avoid situations where they could be making announcements in a particular riding right before a byelection.”
Robertson did not say whether the government has any specific land acquisition in mind, only stating he views that as a “key component.”