Digging In Podcast: Breaking ground on Build Canada Homes

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Transcript:So, let’s talk about this week’s stories. First, our top story, Build Canada Homes, launches. Our second story, a $10 billion LG project has moved to the permitting stage in BC. Third up, Manitoba’s controversial jobs agreement. And finally, rounding out the stories, it’s a housing project that is bigger than the entire population in Moosejaw, and it just broke ground in Saskatchewan. And if you stick around till the end, everybody, you’re going to catch our bonus story in It’s all about beating the heat in northern BC.

So, let’s get into it. So, obviously our top story, let’s just not beat around the bush. It’s the launch of Build Canada Homes. It is a new government agency with a budget of $13 billion. It’s going to offer financial incentives to builders to construct affordable homes and reduce upfront costs for affordable home building. So, some of the first locations and these locations, they’re and to leverage public land. Initially, it’s going to be Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Longueuil, Quebec, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. I know BC people have felt a little bit slighted that they live in one of the most unaffordable areas rather, and they were not included, but this is just the first kind of cohort. They’re also going to look at speeding up the permitting process by giving the green light to bulk projects.

And they’re also using an affordable affordable housing metric that defines affordable housing as housing that costs less than 30% of a household’s pre-tax income. And I interviewed a lot of modular experts about this because Carney has been very explicit that he wants to use industrialized construction methods to achieve these initial 4,000 housing units. And a lot of them were really optimistic. I talked to several modular construction leaders and The biggest problem in modular construction currently has been just having sustained demand. You know, you can’t have factories and crews kind of go go and then have nothing to do. This stop and start. It just doesn’t work for modular. You need kind of more predictable funding, more predictable projects. So, this should hopefully help kind of jumpstart that industry which is already well established in Canada. Next up, we have the S
Ksi Lisims project, an LNG project in BC.

The federal government has just approved the $10 billion project to move on to the permitting phase. So, this followed a joint environmental review with the province and the Nisca Nation. This project is backed by the Nisca Nation, Rocky’s LNG, and Western LNG. The facility, so Lisimswould liquefy natural gas from northeastern BC for export to Asia. This is promising pretty big economic benefits, of course lots of jobs and indigenous revenue. So Ottawa acknowledged that the potential adverse effects on fish, birds and indigenous rights are there but they did deem them limited and manageable with mitigation measures and they impose some binding conditions on environmental protection and cultural safeguards and monitoring. And again, this project hasn’t been completely green lit. It’s just moved on to the permitting. So we’ll see what other updates we have on this going for. But again, a $10 billion project would be huge.

I know Canada LNG is a $40 billion project. So that’s the largest project in Canada. So, this is no slouch. This would be a massive, massive investment. So, next up, the Manitoba government has signed its first Manitoba jobs agreement with the Manitoba building trades. So, this requires all workers on government funded projects over $50 billion to be sourced locally, and the priority is going to be given to unionized Manitobans. So the premier Wab Kinew announced that construction of four new schools will be the first projects under the deal. And it also sets apprenticeship and equity targets to create career pathways for young people, women, new Canadians, indigenous workers. And of course this is supported by union leaders who say the agreement will strengthen communities. It’s going to keep workers safer. It’s going to have better wages, better working conditions.

But construction associations like the Winnipeg Construction Association, they say that they were never consulted on this. And that’s really concerning to them. They say that’s a huge red flag for this. I know for people in BC, I’ve been covering the BC market for a long time. This seems very, very similar to the community benefits agreement that happened in our province, which was extremely controversial for, you know, kind of open shop people, they were not happy about it. Of course, the NDP government and the union leaders were very supportive of it. And I don’t think that the controversy in Manitoba is going to go away. I suspect that kind of the more open shop people are going to get organized. They’re probably going to oppose this pretty strongly. So, we’ll see what happens. I mean, so far it’s just these four schools and it’s kind of limited to projects over $50 million that are government projects.

So, it’s still just one slight case of the construction sector. But, you know, we’ll see if it expands. We’ll see if the government gets results with this and decides to, you know, make it more wholesome and comprehensive. All right, rounding out our main stories, we are moving to Saskatchewan. After years of delays, the construction has officially begun on Coopertown. This is a massive new neighborhood on Regina’s northwest edge, and it will eventually house about 36,000 people. So that would make it one of the largest developments in the entire province. It was first approved in 2017, but the project stalled until a $60 million city-funded lift station solved infrastructure capacity issues with cost to be repaid by developers. And I mean it was delayed for so long that the sign that said coming soon eventually just deteriorated. Which Dream Developments, who is the proponent for the developer for it, they did joke about it. They their good sports.

But they said they will build about 1,200 of the 1,800 acres over 30 years with the first homes expected to hit the market in about late 2026 and then residents are going to be given their keys and moving in around 2027. So, the mayor of Regina said Coopertown is vital to easing Regina’s housing crunch and supports the city’s goal of reaching 300,000 residents by 2040. Yeah, I mean, this is just a great example of a massive project getting across the finish line. Credit to Dream for not giving up on it. Credit to the city, everybody working together to get that infrastructure in place. And again, this is just another example of, you know, you can’t put the horse before the cart. If you’re going to have a humongous influx of housing units, you know, sewer, parking, sidewalks, electrical, all this infrastructure needs to be in place to support these people. And Looks like they were able to get it done.

All right, so everybody who stuck around to the end, you’re going to get your bonus story. A new home under construction in Lumbi, BC is being built with hemprete. Yep, hemprete. It’s a fire-resistant mixture of hemp, lime, and water. And that’s really, really important in this part of BC, in northern BC, because wildfires have become such a massive issue. And this hemprete is very, very fire resistant. And it’s about only 15 more expensive than a standard build. But experts say that it could be much more fire resistant than a traditional build. And of course there’s a lot of other ways that you can make your home more resilient to wildfires based on where you put things, trimming plants and there’s certain fire resistant plants. But this just kind of shows how we’re having to rethink how we build certain things in the face of climate change. Wildfires have gotten a lot more pre alien.

Same with you know major storms and I think more and more in our building code you know proponents of projects they’re going to be looking at how can housing and how can infrastructure and how can offices etc. How can all these things withstand some of these you know extreme weather events that are coming? So that’s it. That’s the podcast. Maybe you’re on your commute to work. Maybe you’re just having your morning coffee. Whatever it is, I hope you’re having a good day. Hey, I hope things go well and I hope you join us next week for the biggest construction headlines. And if you want some more news and insights, go to readsightnews.com and subscribe to our industry-leading newsletter to get even more. Thanks. Have a good one.