The federal government's 2026 budget has quietly dropped the Liberals' promise to double the pace of home construction in Canada, a pledge that had been central to the party's 2025 election platform and was repeated in the 2025 budget. Instead, the 511-page document sets a narrower goal: tripling non-market housing starts to 24,000 a year over the next decade.
The shift has drawn criticism from the Conservative opposition. Scott Aitchison, the party's housing critic, described the change as a broken promise. The housing minister's office has said the doubling goal still stands, pointing to a statement made in May. Yet the spring economic update also left out the target, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Annette Ryan, noted that the update provided no specific home-building targets at all. The status of the doubling goal therefore remains unclear: it is not clearly abandoned, but it is no longer stated in the government's main fiscal documents.
The new non-market target matters in a market where such homes represent only a small share of annual construction. Ottawa has committed additional funding to support it, including an extra $13 billion over 10 years for Build Canada Homes, a Crown corporation. The budget also pledges tens of billions of dollars over the decade to end homelessness, and the government points to the Housing Accelerator Fund and a rental loan program as successful initiatives. Other measures include a GST waiver on new homes and funds for local infrastructure.
The backdrop is a housing sector that has grown considerably. National housing starts are more than 20 per cent above pre-pandemic levels, and rental construction is running at a record pace, while rents have been trending lower. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation says population growth is slowing and rental markets are balancing. Its business-as-usual forecast puts annual starts at about 231,000, and it projects a shortfall of roughly 238,000 homes against affordable levels by 2036.
Doubling the pace would imply roughly 500,000 starts a year, far above the peak of near 300,000 Canada has reached. Economists have questioned whether that goal was realistic. Mike Moffatt has called the doubling target too high and lacking nuance, while Andy Yan has described the original goal as aspirational rather than realistic. Moffatt has also said non-market targets are easier for government to control, though they remain constrained by costs.
Those costs are rising. Material prices have increased because of U.S. tariffs, and a soft labour market is dampening demand. The Bank of Canada raised its policy rate last month, its first increase in more than three years. Housing construction also depends heavily on municipal approvals and on federal and provincial levers, which limit how much control Ottawa can exercise on its own. The budget's revised language reflects those limits, even as the government has yet to say formally whether the broader doubling goal has been set aside.
11
