Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­

OTTAWA — The parliamentary budget office projects Ottawa’s new housing agency will fill only a small gap in the housing market.

The Liberals launched Build Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ Homes in September and tasked the new federal agency with boosting the total stock of affordable housing with $13 billion in funding for loans, financing and land acquisition.

But the fiscal watchdog also warns in a new report that overall federal housing spending is set to decline by 56 per cent over the next three years, as new funding for Build Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ Homes only partially offsets other programs that are set to expire or haven’t been publicly renewed yet.

The budget office says Build Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ Homes is projected to add 26,000 units to the total housing supply across the country over the next five years, half of which would be affordable homes for low-income Canadians.

That represents a boost of 2.1 per cent to the office’s baseline projection for housing supply growth over the same period — just a fraction of the number of new homes needed to restore affordability.

The Liberals have promised to double the pace of housing Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­, but the budget office notes the government hasn’t released a complete plan to achieve that goal.

©2025 The Canadian Press