April 24, 2024
Halton Region, Ontario
 

One of the biggest pressures on people right now is housing. Young Canadians are being priced out of their communities. Families are finding it difficult to get a good place to settle down. Rising rents and the high cost of buying a home are making it more difficult for younger generations to find a place to call home. We need more homes in Canada and we need to keep them affordable.

Right now, governments across Canada are sitting on surplus, underused, and vacant public lands, like empty office towers or low-rise buildings that could be built on. By unlocking more public lands for housing, we can lower the costs of construction and build more homes, faster, at prices Canadians can afford.

The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today highlighted new measures included in Budget 2024 and Canada’s Housing Plan to build more affordable homes on public lands – and make housing fairer for every generation.

Canada’s Housing Plan lays out a bold strategy to unlock 3.87 million new homes across the country by 2031, including 250,000 homes through a new Public Lands for Homes Plan that includes:

• Reviewing the federal government’s entire portfolio of federally owned land and properties to rapidly identify sites where new homes can be built.
• Making more land available for housing by identifying and building on underutilized public lands as well as acquiring new lands.
• Leasing public lands as opposed to selling them off so public land stays public and affordable homes stay affordable.
• Launching a new public land bank and mapping tool to help homebuilders more easily identify and navigate public lands.
• Introducing legislation to facilitate the acquisition and use of public lands for homes, in partnership with other orders of government.
• Accelerating administrative timelines to make public lands available for affordable housing faster.

We will also make better use of existing land. This includes:

• Building homes on Canada Post properties. With a large portfolio of land, Canada Post has more than 1,700 post offices in over 1,700 communities across the country. Many of these sites often house one-storey Canada Post buildings, which could be leveraged to build new homes across the country, while maintaining Canada Post services.
• Building homes on National Defence lands. National Defence owns property in every province and territory, and these properties are often underutilized. We’ll redevelop National Defence properties that are suitable for military and civilian use and divest surplus properties that are not required for National Defence operations but have the potential for housing.
• Converting underused federal offices into homes. The federal government owns a lot of office buildings and half of them are either underused or entirely vacant. We’ll reduce our office footprint, convert these offices into homes – especially in urban areas – and prioritize student housing and affordable housing.

Alongside these measures, Budget 2024 will also:

• Provide $500 million to launch a new public lands acquisition fund, which will buy land from other orders of government to help build middle-class homes.
• Top-up the Federal Lands Initiative with $117 million to unlock more federal lands for affordable housing providers, with a minimum of 1,500 homes.
• Make public lands available more quickly by scaling up the Centre of Expertise on Disposals. With an investment of $20 million, Public Services and Procurement Canada will advance collaboration with key government and industry partners.
• Invest $15 million in the recently announced Public Land Bank and mapping tool. This funding will develop a public land bank, including an interactive geo-spatial mapping tool to better plan the use of public lands.
• Support and expand the activities of the Canada Lands Company through an investment of $5 million to build more homes on public lands.

We will continue to explore ways to leverage our low-cost financing, including through our new Canada Builds initiative, to encourage provinces and territories to build more homes, including on their public lands. Changing the way we build housing to solve the housing crisis will take a Team Canada effort, and no single order of government, home builder, not-for-profit, or community can do it alone. We need every order of government doing their part to build the homes Canadians need.

We’re building more homes and making sure they’re affordable – and it’s just one of the things included in Budget 2024. Alongside these measures, we’re investing in innovation, growing our economy, strengthening health care, and making life more affordable so that every generation can get ahead.