Canada as Leader in Housing

Build Smarter, Better, Faster: Proposal to Develop Canada as a World Leader in Housing Production through Design for Assembly/Manufacturing

Challenge:

Two of the biggest obstacles to reducing the cost of housing production are the availability of skilled labour and building practices. Current building practices, even with some focus on current prefabrication, simply require too much skilled labour.

Opportunity:

Canada has an opportunity to lower the cost of housing production and improve labour productivity by leveraging our expertise in Design for Assembly/Manufacturing (DFA/M) to improve quality, reduce costs and increase production volumes. DFA/M has reduced cost by 30%+ and improved quality in other industries.

Proposal:

That the Government of Canada expand the mandate of Build Canada Homes to include the development of a national housing industry with the goal of creating a low- cost housing production industry and positioning Canada as a world-leader in housing production. Lowering the cost of producing housing, using standard designs, leveraging the volume of housing required benefits all forms of housing; seniors, indigenous, students, young families, etc.

DFA/M typically requires significant investment. Developing new technologies, new production techniques, and automation, etc., is expensive. To fund and realize a reasonable ROI on the investment, a significant volume of production is necessary.

Achieving that volume is possible if the role of Build Canada Homes includes the overall responsibility to develop a Canadian housing industry, incorporating DFM/A working with private industry in the Canadian housing industry. This could be modelled somewhat like Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, which led the efforts to create the CANDU reactor and an industry to produce it. Following the AECL model, Build Canada Homes establishes a consortium of private and public resources to implement the solution.

Background:

In April 2024, the Government of Canada created Build Canada Homes, which focuses on:

1: Building more homes: Bringing down construction costs, getting cities to allow more homes to be built, transforming how we build them, and growing the workforce to get the job done.

2: Making it easier to rent or own a home: Making it easier to rent or own a home and ensuring every renter or homeowner can retain their home.

3: Helping Canadians who can't afford a home: Working to end chronic homelessness in Canada, and building more affordable housing for students and seniors.

This policy proposal recognizes that Canada has to build more housing than it ever has before and seeks innovative approaches to overcoming significant obstacles. In 2025, CMHC estimated that up to 480,000 housing units need to be built per year. This is about double what is currently being built, and lately the number of housing units under construction has been declining.

While the Government of Canada, Provinces and Municipalities have taken steps to address the housing crisis with many programs to address seniors housing, housing for young families, indigenous housing, student housing, reduced permitting costs, changing zoning to encourage multi-unit buildings, etc, the actual cost of producing the housing is something that receives little attention.

To date, much of the federal government’s efforts have focused on establishing standardized housing plans (Housing Design Catalogue) and a greater focus on prefabricated housing. While these efforts, alongside other government programs, will lead to incremental improvements in the pace of housing construction, they will not double housing builds at affordable prices.

Example:

In Calgary, ATCO Structures and Attainable Housing Calgary are partnering to build affordable studio apartments.

ATCO is building 56 modular units to deliver 84 studio apartments.

By using factory built prefabricated units, this project can be delivered at a lower cost, higher quality and much less time than traditional building methods.

OSE Proposal

OSE has pioneered rapid swarm build techniques where even unskilled participants - under the guidance of professional build guides - can build a complete house in only 5 days.

This does not require expensive plant and automation: it requires a sweat equity model for home buyers, much like Habitat For Humanity.