The global landscape is rapidly changing, leaving countries, businesses, and workers under a cloud of uncertainty. In response, Canada's government is focused on what we can control: building a stronger economy, creating good job opportunities with higher wages for Canadians, and building capacity across key sectors. Housing is a central part of this effort.

Far too many Canadians are struggling to find homes they can afford. In major cities, new home sales have fallen below historical levels, which has had and will continue to have impact on future housing supply. This trend has resulted in job losses in the skilled trades and construction -- workers who are essential for supercharging homebuilding across the country -- a core priority. Solving Canada's housing crisis requires immediate action to bring down costs, cut red tape, and build homes more quickly.

To that end, the Government of Canada launched Build Canada Homes, a new federal agency that is increasing the pace of homebuilding, including transitional and supportive housing, deeply affordable and community housing. Paired with a comprehensive suite of housing programs, totaling approximately $40 billion, the federal government is increasing its effort to tackle these urgent issues through targeted measures that protect jobs in homebuilding, increase new housing supply, and work to make homes more affordable.

On March 26, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Finance and National Revenue, introduced Bill C-26, An Act to authorize certain payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the purpose of improving housing supply. Subject to passage, this legislation proposes to provide immediately $1.7 billion to provinces and territories to implement measures to increase Canada's housing supply.  

This federal investment is meant to unlock new housing supply. These funds can support measures across the country such as reducing development fees or levies on new home construction and making incremental investments in provincial and territorial programming already in place to spur housing developments. Ontario's HST announcement yesterday is a key example of how these transfers will improve supply. This work builds on the requirement on provinces and territories to reduce development fees and other charges to homebuilding to access funding through the provincial and territorial stream of the Build Communities Strong Fund.

These funds may also be used to support the efforts of provinces and territories to deliver on improving internal trade by harmonizing regulations and increasing productivity in the home construction sector.