By Robin MacLennan<\/p>\n
Ontario Construction Report staff writer<\/p>\n
The federal government\u2019s housing strategy doesn\u2019t go far enough to address critical infrastructure needs and the housing crisis, according to the Canadian Construction Association (CCA).<\/p>\n
The federal government\u2019s plan announced in the April federal budget, promises at least 1.2 million more homes for Canadians, on top of what the industry was planning to build. Yet, with estimates by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities showing that each new housing unit requires $107,000 in public infrastructure investment, an additional $128 billion is needed to build, support, and connect these homes to essential housing-enabling infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Also, measures to ease lending for home buying and rezoning may exacerbate demand in the long-term \u201cwith no real long-term vision on how to increase supply\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBudget 2024 sets a bold objective to help Canadians buy homes but misses the mark on delivering sufficient investment and a plan to ensure a steady flow of funds to address our nation’s infrastructure challenges,” said Mary Van Buren, CCA president. \u201cWhile we acknowledge some initiatives, such as funding for creating affordable apartments, training and recruiting more workers, and upgrading water and wastewater systems and lack of strategic vision are concerning.\u201d<\/p>\n
With growing demands to build more homes and related infrastructure, CCA says the urgency to collaborate with provinces, municipalities, and the industry is more pressing than ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need investments in infrastructure that are made based on the real needs of Canadians \u2013 projects that are shovel-worthy rather than just shovel-ready,\u201d said Van Buren. \u201cThis visionary and consultative approach is what Canadians deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n
The federal government needs to implement policies and incentives that support housing construction and related essential infrastructure, including trade-enabling infrastructure, and fund programs to build the workforce we need and construction projects that share risk so that innovation and investment is encouraged, not hampered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Robin MacLennan Ontario Construction Report staff writer The federal government\u2019s housing strategy doesn\u2019t go far enough to address critical infrastructure needs and the housing crisis, according to the Canadian Construction Association (CCA). The federal government\u2019s plan announced in the April federal budget, promises at least 1.2 million more homes for Canadians, on top of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":13372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116,111,89],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-around-the-province","8":"category-contractors","9":"category-projectsopportunities"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ontarioconstructionreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13370"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ontarioconstructionreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ontarioconstructionreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ontarioconstructionreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ontarioconstructionreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13370"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ontarioconstructionreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13373,"href":"https:\/\/ontarioconstructionreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13370\/revisions\/13373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ontarioconstructionreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ontarioconstructionreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ontarioconstructionreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ontarioconstructionreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}