Building At Scale: A CCI Policy Report on Innovation & Canada’s Housing Crisis

You don't need CCI to tell you that we’re in a housing crisis.

Housing costs are too high, and according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, we would need to build about 5.8 million homes by 2030 to bring affordability back to 2004 levels.

Everyone in Canada needs a home. If we want to make sure that everyone can live in one that is safe and affordable, we need to change how we build them.

"Canada's housing crisis is an economic crisis. And if it’s left unresolved, an economic crisis can become a sovereignty crisis," said CCI President Benjamin Bergen. "But using Canadian ingenuity to build homes for Canadians is also an economic opportunity. We can import foreign solutions and stay dependent. Or we can back Canadian innovators and build sovereignty through prosperity."

As the voice of 175 of Canada’s most innovative scale-up companies across the country and across every sector of the economy, the Council of Canadian Innovators has consulted with experts and studied the issue, to examine the role that technology can play in solving our national housing crisis.

"Canada’s innovators can be part of the solution. Advanced construction techniques, materials and technologies, as well as AI and other software solutions, can dramatically bring down the costs of building and maintaining homes," said CCI Director of Policy and Research Laurent Carbonneau, the report's lead author. "These innovations can also relieve pressure on Canada’s overstretched construction workforce, build economies of scale across the country, and build up Canadian companies into global housing leaders equipped to export Canadian solutions and natural resources all over the world."

We believe there are five solutions that will make Canadian homebuilding more innovative and efficient:

1. Unlock the power of scale and modularity: Work across all levels of government to harmonize and simplify land use policy, including through pre-approved building designs.
2. Integrate new technologies into building: Work to certify outcome- or performance-based codes and standards for safety.
3. Incentivize innovation: Financially de-risk modular construction, investment in robotics, digital building information models (BIMs), and other labour-saving technologies that create higher upfront costs for builders but result in significant savings at scale and over the lifetime of a building.
4. Address looming talent and workforce constraints: Investing in education on cutting-edge tech skills and industrialized processes.
5. Build on Canada’s resource strengths: Focus on scaling of novel materials like mass timber, which provide an opportunity to move up resource value chains.

Download a full PDF of the report HERE.

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CCI's Director of Policy & Research Laurent Carbonneau talked about housing, in conversation with the Canadian SHIELD Institute's chief economist, Kaylie Tiessen, and James Broadhead, Chief Operating Officer of IGV Housing.

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À propos du Conseil des innovateurs canadiens

The Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) represents more than 175 of Canada’s fastest-growing technology companies. Founded in 2015, CCI advocates for policies that help Canadian innovators scale globally, create prosperity at home, and strengthen Canada’s economic sovereignty.