|
Canada is synonymous with trees. Covering nearly 40 per cent of our land mass, close to nine per cent of the global total, Canada’s forests hold the answers for many who work and play there.
The forest is also the answer to a growing national crisis: housing.
Since 2020, Canada’s population has sharply risen, fuelled by immigration, and its housing stock failed to keep up. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimates 3.5 million homes must be built by 2030 to keep up with demand.
Rick Jeffery, president and CEO of the Canadian Wood Council (CWC), works closely with the home building industry, the largest driver of domestic lumber sales. He is well versed in these numbers. “Essentially we’d have to go from building 250,000 housing units a year in Canada to building 500,000.”
Those targets are impossible to achieve with traditional construction methodologies, Jeffery says. Housing in many regions – Ontario in particular – is as unaffordable for builders as it is for buyers. The cost of land, development charges and taxes, permitting delays, and the cost of building materials and labour all work to make new builds out of reach.
But, Jeffery says, with the right mix of government actions, funding, and industry investment, Canadian wood is poised to help solve the housing crisis.
|
