This piece was originally published in the National Post: Building Canadian homes with Canadian wood | National Post
Canada’s housing crisis demands bold solutions — and sustainably sourced wood could be the key
Canada is facing a housing crisis of historic proportions. With affordability slipping out of reach for millions and supply lagging far behind demand, we need bold, scalable and sustainable solutions. The federal government’s Build Canada Homes initiative is a promising start and an opportunity to scale up the use of Canadian wood in building construction.
Why wood works
Wood-based modern methods of construction — such as mass timber, panelized systems and modular construction — offers unmatched speed, quality and sustainability. Offsite construction using wood can reduce build times by 20 to 50 per cent, cut material waste by up to 30 per cent and lower embodied carbon emissions by 30 to 60 per cent. These are not marginal gains — they are game-changers.
Ontario alone has approximately 40 panel and prefab plants capable of supplying 24,000 homes annually. Capacity in British Columbia and Québec is growing rapidly. But without stable demand pipelines and predictable financing, these factories remain underutilized. The Build Canada Homes program can change that by anchoring demand and unlocking investment.
Building better, faster, smarter
Traditional construction is slow, expensive and carbon intensive. Wood-based modern methods of construction flips that model on its head. Imagine a six-storey modular apartment assembled in weeks instead of months. Site work and module fabrication happen simultaneously, slashing financing costs and weather delays. Standardized designs reduce unit costs, and factory-controlled environments boost quality and energy efficiency.
Mass timber stores carbon rather than emitting it and it’s easier to work with — especially in remote or challenging environments. Factory-built homes are also easier to make energy-efficient, supporting long-term affordability for residents.
Recognizing wood-based homebuilding products and approaches under Build Canada Homes drives predictable demand for Canadian forest products by leveraging federal procurement requirements and federal offtake agreements.
A streamlined national approvals system and a library of pre-approved designs would immediately reduce permitting and design timelines. With sustained, stabilized quarterly bulk purchasing, regional hubs could shorten production timelines for consumers, while also making scaling predictable for producers. Combining loan guarantees, concessional financing and reformed progress payments would de-risk delivery and attract capital to the sector.
Policy-driven growth is possible: expanding building codes right across the country to use wood for up to 18 storeys and incentivizing mass timber use could double Canada’s structural wood demand over the next decade. Designating domestic wood as a strategic material in its Build Canada Homes prioritizes made-in-Canada forest products in federal housing projects to reduce emissions, accelerate build times and support rural and northern job creation.
Forestry is a lifeline for rural and remote communities
Despite recent market and trade challenges, forestry is a lifeline for hundreds of Canadian communities, providing over 200,000 direct jobs, an additional nearly 200,000 indirect jobs and generating $87 billion in annual economic activity.
Rising global demand creates an opportunity to bring more Canadian wood products to the world, while simultaneously growing jobs and building more homes. But as the Canadian economy faces significant upheaval and needs to transform, the industry and its 200,000 employees can’t do it alone.
The current trade environment is volatile. Increased duties on softwood lumber exports to the U.S. and related trade uncertainty threaten Canadian forestry’s ability to deliver at scale. Thousands of jobs are at risk as trade negotiations continue.
Securing the best possible outcome at the Canada-U.S. negotiating table is job one. Exports remain the foundation of the sector and the livelihood of forest-dependent communities. Concurrent to that, we need the federal government to focus on the policy levers we can control.
Canadian wood is faster, greener and more affordable
While other forested nations like Brazil, Finland, Sweden and the United States have been aggressively targeting forest sector investment and improving competitiveness in recent years, Canada has been falling behind.
Despite the challenging headwinds and uncertainty, Canadian forestry sees a path forward to transformation and growth. That path must be anchored in a new partnership with the federal government — one that stabilizes the sector, creates greater certainty and predictability and allows us to bring more innovative, sustainably-sourced, made in Canada wood products to Canada and the world.
