Federal Government Announces Housing Plan, Hints at Greener Homes Revival
On Friday, April 12th, Prime Minister Trudeau, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, and the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, Sean Fraser, unveiled the federal government’s new housing plan, Solving the housing crisis: Canada’s Housing Plan, which will be supported by new investments through the upcoming federal budget.
The plan includes a commitment to make housing affordable, with the stated goal that
No hard-working Canadian should have to spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing costs. No Canadian should have to live without knowing they have a safe and affordable place to live.
The plan aims to unlock 3.87 million new homes by 2031, including a minimum of 2 million net new homes, on top of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s forecast of 1.87 million being built anyway by 2031. Federal actions in this plan, in Budget 2024, and taken in fall 2023 will support at least 1.2 million new homes, and we call on all orders of government to build at least 800,000 more homes by 2031.
Included in the plan is a new version of the recently ended Greener Homes program. When the program was wound down earlier this year, Minister of Natural Resources Canada Jonathan Wilkinson promised a revamped version of the program to come in the federal budget. Details remain unclear but here is what the federal announcement says:
To address the twin challenges of climate change and energy affordability, the government will launch the Canada Green Buildings Strategy. The strategy will focus on lowering home energy bills and reducing building emissions by supporting energy efficient retrofits.
Through Budget 2024, we will propose investing $903.5 million to:
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Launch a new Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program. This will support energy efficient retrofits for Canadian homeowners and renters with low to median incomes, bringing down the monthly cost of home heating for hard-working Canadian families;
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Renew and improve existing energy efficiency programs that offer tools to building owners. This funding will spur the development of better building codes to further reduce emissions and lower energy bills. The federal government, through various housing investments, will incentivize provinces and territories to adopt these top-tier building codes; and
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Continue developing national approaches to home energy labelling, which will empower prospective home buyers with information about the energy efficiency of their new home, with the support of energy auditors.
More details on the Canada Green Buildings Strategy will be released in the coming weeks.
HRAI will engage with NRCan and Minister of Finance in the weeks ahead to seek details on program design and timelines.
For more information, contact Martin Luymes at 1-800-267-2231 ext. 235 or email mluymes@hrai.ca.
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