Labour Day is when we all pause to recognize the men and women who build our homes, schools, hospitals, roads, and infrastructure. At the start of this year, 250,000 British Columbians worked in construction. That number is now falling, as a sharp slowdown in homebuilding triggers layoffs of highly skilled tradespeople on a scale we haven't seen in more than a decade. July alone saw 7,600 construction jobs lost in B.C., and more losses are coming.
A housing crisis has become a jobs crisis -- because government has made it too slow and too expensive to build.
For 20 years, politicians have talked about affordability while piling on taxes, fees and red tape. Homebuilders warned them. Buyers felt the weight of it. And now projects are stalling or being cancelled, as electricians, pipefitters, welders, drywallers, plumbers, roofers, and forming workers are sent to the unemployment line. The loss of these well-paying, family supporting jobs will be felt across our economy, devastating lives and disrupting communities.
In August 2023, Dr. Mike Moffatt of the Missing Middle Initiative called for a "war-time effort" to address the crisis. Yet this year, Canada will build roughly 237,000 homes -- 12,000 fewer than in 1972. By 2027, CMHC projects just 220,000. Two generations later, with twice the population, output is falling.
Far from mounting a wartime effort, we haven't even mobilized for battle.
When governments treat new homes as a cash cow, taxing them like cigarettes or alcohol, the results are predictable. Costs spiral, buyers step back, and projects stall.
Meanwhile, politicians make hollow pledges. In March, Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to double Canadian homebuilding to 500,000 homes a year. Last fall, Premier David Eby pledged 300,000 "middle-class" homes in the next decade. These pronouncements are worth little. These wild promises reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of how housing markets work. As we have seen in B.C., government programs struggle to get enough shovels in the ground and rarely make a real difference.
We need fewer promises and more building. Four fixes:
1. Cut approval and permitting times. Too many good projects die at city hall, trapped in an endless maze of bylaws and regulations. Developers can assemble the best architects, engineers and builders, but once submitted, projects get bogged down in overworked, understaffed, and often inexperienced planning and engineering departments. We must shift more decision-making away from city halls and let the qualified experts design and the contractors build.
2. Reduce taxes and the cost of construction. Building codes are now a tangled web of requirements that commonly add cost without adding value. They must be simplified, with an explicit focus on delivering new homes at prices buyers can afford. The B.C. Energy Step Code and CleanBC are examples of government policies that inflate costs without delivering any practical benefits. And the "growth pays for growth" tax load in areas like Metro Vancouver is staggering. Building permit fees, municipal and regional development cost charges, community amenity contributions, other Metro Vancouver levies and TransLink fees, property transfer taxes, PST, and GST. We have effectively stacked the deck against first-time homebuyers seeking a foothold in the housing market.
3. Rethink how we fund municipal infrastructure. Rather than create more bureaucracy or make wild, unattainable promises, Ottawa and Victoria should partner with cities to replace aging water and sewer systems and roads and build the new infrastructure our growing cities need. This would relieve municipalities of cost pressures that drive them to overtax housing. It's here that some regulated foreign investment in new build can play a role. If structured with the right conditions, British Columbians stand to benefit. We have investment needs that vastly exceed the pool of domestic savings. LNG Canada shows what's possible when vision meets capital, even when much of that capital comes from abroad.
4. Collaborate. In early 2024, then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened a national summit on auto theft. Where's the summit on housing, an issue that affects everyone? Instead, Ottawa launches one program, Victoria another, and municipalities a patchwork of their own, too often without consulting the people who actually build. This fractured, piecemeal approach guarantees failure.
If homes were built on government intentions, we'd be done by now. But intentions don't pour foundations. Governments don't build houses -- contractors and their teams do. Our homebuilders can deliver, but we need clearer rules, predictable timelines, and reasonable tax and regulation levels to make projects viable.
Without urgent, coordinated action, homebuilding will collapse, bringing job losses and economic pain not seen in B.C. since the 1990s.