Good afternoon, everyone.

Gregor, I'd like to thank you for all the work you've done over the course of the last four months getting this in place.

I'd like to thank Mayor Sutcliffe and all our great colleagues from the National Capital Region caucus.

And I wanted to say just how great it is to be here today with the Caivan team.

And Frank and Troy, what you and your colleagues have created is absolutely extraordinary. It is great to see what you can build and how fast you can build. Congratulations.

We are tantalizingly close to my riding of Nepean. Just across there.

And Anita's riding. Yes, Anita Vandenbeld's riding of Ottawa West-Nepean.

But Nepean, is the proud home to Caivan, one of Canada's most successful developers, manufacturers, and home builders.

It's one of a new breed that are driving a Canadian industrial revolution in home building, one we need.

Caivan is scaling up their plan from around six homes per day present, to 38 per day by the end of the year. That is 10,000 homes a year built in their factory in Nepean.

The two sets of homes behind me were manufactured in two days and assembled on site in one.

We wanted to keep the townhouses open. We held back the workers from finishing it, so you could see how things fit together, how the computer design fits together and tailors the structure.

The one over there is being shipped to Nunavut, and I'll speak more about that project in a moment.

Caivan is proof of Canadian expertise in building the homes of the future. Their speed, rigor, and commitment to innovation are the reasons why we are here with them today.

Exactly six months ago today, Canada's new government was sworn in for the first time, and on the steps of Rideau Hall, I promised that our focus would be action and change.

And we immediately began to deliver that change.

On Day One, we cancelled the consumer carbon tax, which had become too divisive, and that helped bring down gas prices for all Canadians.

And after the general election, in our first session of Parliament, we cut taxes for the middle class, removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade and passed the Building Canada Act to scale up major projects of national interest.

This summer, we signed new agreements with our partners and allies to diversify our trade.

In June, we struck a new E.U.-Canada Partnership that will expand and deepen our trade defence and energy as well as our commercial relationships.

Last month, I traveled to Ukraine, Poland, Germany, and Latvia to strengthen our shared prosperity and security, particularly in the areas of critical minerals, energy, defence, and artificial intelligence.

Over the past two weeks, we have launched historic initiatives and investments to protect workers hardest hit by U.S. tariffs and to strengthen the competitiveness of our businesses.

We established the Major Projects Office and launched our first round of new nation-building projects to transform our economy.

Sixty billion dollars of upfront investments combined with strategies that will catalyse hundreds of billions of dollars more, and we're just getting started.

The change is just beginning.

We need to keep moving with speed and determination because the upheaval in the global trading system is not a transition – it's a rupture.

And its effects are already profound – workers displaced from their jobs, supply chains disrupted, and massive amounts of investments held back due to extreme uncertainty.

Now more than ever, we need to take control of our destiny.

In this environment of upheaval, Canada's new government is focusing on what we can control – empowering Canadians by strengthening our economic power.

We're transforming Canada's economy from one that had become too reliant on a single trade partner to an economy that's more diverse, more resilient, that's built for Canadian workers and their families.

The Canadian government's seven core missions will build our economy, protect our workers, and empower Canadians to seize the opportunities that will arise from this transformation.

We won't just manage through this crisis. We will prosper from it.

And that brings me to today's announcement.

We're focusing on our government's mission to make housing more affordable for all Canadians.

You know, young Canadians are doing everything right. They're studying hard, finding a job, saving up.

Yet, for too many of them rent is unaffordable, and home ownership feels entirely out of reach.

Across the country, it takes nearly four years for first-time home buyers to save for a downpayment. In a market such as Toronto or Vancouver, even longer.

For decades, experts have been sounding the alarm. Canada does not have enough housing because we are not building enough, and not building fast enough.

Today, with increasing pressure on supply, prices remain too high. In short, affordable housing has become a crisis for Canadians.

So, we're in a housing crisis, as Gregor said, and it's going to take all hands on deck to get us out of it.

Our private sector, our provinces and territories, municipalities, non-profits, and Indigenous partners all working together to speed up and scale up home building to build the affordable housing that all Canadians deserve.

And so today, the Minister of Housing and I are proud to launch Build Canada Homes, a new federal entity that will supercharge housing construction across Canada.

Build Canada Homes will do several things.

It will help fight homelessness by building transitional and supportive housing in close partnership with provinces, territories, municipalities, and Indigenous communities.

Secondly, it will expand deeply affordable and community housing for low-income households.

Third, Build Canada Homes will partner with private sector developers to build affordable homes for the Canadian middle class.

And finally, Build Canada Homes, in doing all of that, will catalyse the creation of an entirely new Canadian housing industry that uses modern methods of construction to boost productivity, sustainably and at scale.

So how do we do that?

Well, Build Canada Homes will offer flexible financial incentives.

It'll approve large portfolio projects and quickly leverage public lands for housing, so projects are derisked, approvals are greenlit, and builders can do what they do best – which is to build.

By combining development, financing, and innovation, Build Canada Homes will make large housing projects financially viable.

It will also attract enormous private capital into affordable home building, and it will enable private manufacturers and modular home builders to invest in new factories, expand capacity rapidly, and continue to innovate.

This, along with a series of other new measures, will help double the pace of housing construction in this country over the next decade.

Build Canada Homes will transform the way our country increases the supply of housing, attracts faster, attracts smarter, and builds cheaper.

Build Canada Homes will be the one-stop shop for affordable housing and will accelerate major housing projects to get building quickly.

This initiative will play a key role in our plan to double the pace of housing construction over the next decade.

The core challenge in present in the housing market is it's just too hard to build.

Loans are expensive, developers face year-long delays in permitting and land and development charges and taxes can make up half of project costs.

These are some of the reasons that there has been no productivity growth in construction in the past 40 years.

And since the pandemic, construction productivity has actually fallen. We need big changes to turn this around.

With an initial capitalization of $13 billion, Build Canada Homes will reduce the upfront costs of building by offering flexible financial incentives to attract private capital and to catalyse large portfolio projects.

Build Canada Homes will use a range of financial tools, from contributions to loans, loan guarantees, equity investments, and investments in real property and housing.

To streamline approvals, Build Canada Homes will greenlight projects in bulk.

So instead of developers needing to submit dozens of applications separately, large portfolios of projects will be approved all at once.

This is part of our government's broader efforts to cut duplication and reduce costs for Canadians.

Multi-year deals will create steady demand so developers can plan, expand, and build more homes, and modern housing factories can build the capacity that we need.

To reduce the cost of construction, Build Canada Homes will maximize the use of public lands.

The Canada Lands Company will be transferred to the Build Canada Homes portfolio.

That's going to streamline construction on public lands.

Let me put this in a bit of context. As we stand here today, there are already 88 federal properties suitable for housing listed on the Canada Land Bank, spanning 463 hectares.

That's the size of downtown Ottawa.

I'm directing my Cabinet colleagues to look for more, to determine those lands owned by their departments which can also be used for housing.

This land will help lower costs for builders, and most importantly, lower the rents in new home prices for Canadian families.

Because the government shares the risk, projects that would otherwise have been blocked can finally come to fruition.

The second major challenge with housing construction in this country is that by using conventional methods, our construction is just too slow for the housing supply that we need to meet our current needs.

It's also too expensive and too heavily reliant on traditional on-site methods.

We need to transform the way we build by harnessing the latest technologies. And that's why Build Canada Homes will prioritize the use of cost-efficient and modern methods of construction, including factory built, modular, and mass timber.

Factory-built housing means homes, or large parts of homes, built in controlled factory settings with provision, precision, with advanced machinery, and benefitting from the latest technology.

These homes can be standardized, mass produced, and once completed, shipped to site and assembled in days or weeks rather than months or years.

Factory production also enables housing construction to continue through Canadian winters. This removes seasonal downtime that currently slows down the sector.

And factory-built housing can accelerate home building by up to 50%, lower costs by 20%, and reduce emissions by over 20% compared to traditional construction methods.

In short, Build Canada Homes will help us build faster, smarter, and more sustainably.

And the third challenge for Canadian home building is supply chains.

Right now, the situation is that Canada exports raw materials such as timber, steel, aluminium, largely to the U.S., and then we import finished products such as windows, panels, and prefabricated units at much higher costs.

In effect, we are paying other countries to convert what we already have into what we really need – no more.

Build Canada Homes will adopt the government's new Buy Canadian policy and prioritize projects such as these that use Canadian resources.

Will strengthen domestic supply chains, create high-paying careers across the country, and ensure the new housing drives new orders for Canadian steel, lumber, mass timber, and aluminium.

We will create an entirely new housing industry in Canada, not only to build homes but also to export made-in-Canada modular homes, wood products, and housing technologies.

Now, it's a big job ahead for Build Canada Homes. To supercharge affordable housing development and create that new industry in Canada – it needs a strong and experienced leader.

And that's why the Minister and I are pleased to announce that Ana Bailão will be the new CEO of Build Canada Homes.

Ana is a seasoned leader with deep experience in affordable housing, having served for over a decade on Toronto's City Council, including as Deputy Mayor from 2017 to 2022, as Chair of the Planning and Housing Committee, and on the Board of Toronto Community Housing.

While on Council, Ana spearheaded the creation of Housing Now, which uses city lands to build affordable housing. And most recently, she served as Head of Affordable Housing at the private developer Dream Unlimited.

Canadians are fortunate, Ana, that you will put your experience in the service of building faster across our country. Thank you.

And notice that in a sense of urgency, Ana is here on a Sunday – we're all here on a Sunday.

We are getting straight to work by announcing the first four investments and initiatives of Build Canada Homes.

First, as we begin to develop the public lands in the Canada Lands portfolio, we will make good on that promise to prioritize modern factory-built housing.

To begin with, Build Canada Homes will develop six sites to build 4,000 factory-built homes on federal lands, with additional capacity on those sites of up to 45,000 units.

Moving east to west, the first tranche of those sites will be in Dartmouth, NS, Longueuil, QC, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Edmonton.

What BCH will do is employ a direct build approach, overseeing and leading construction projects focussed on affordable, mixed income communities.

The second thing we're going to do out of the gate is to help protect existing affordable rental housing.

The one and a half billion Canada Rental Protection Fund will be launched under Build Canada Homes.

This initiative supports community housing by acquiring at risk rental apartment buildings and ensuring they remain affordable over the long term.

It also aligns with Build Canada Homes' broader mandate, to grow the supply of affordable and non-market housing. Not just by building new homes but by preserving the ones on which Canadians already rely.

The third thing that Build Canada Homes will do out of the gate is allocate $1 billion for new capital investments in supportive and transitional housing for those at risk for experiencing homelessness.

It will work in collaboration with the provinces, territories, and municipalities, and our Indigenous partners.

We will pair those federal investments with employment and healthcare support for those people.

Finally, Build Canada Homes will partner with Nunavut's Housing Corporation to build over 700 public affordable and supportive housing units, and approximately 30% of those units are expected to be built off site using factory-built housing.

Now, Build Canada Homes will announce a series of additional projects across the country in the months ahead, leveraging those public assets, public lands, partnering with the private sector to build at scale.

Every federal dollar invested in Build Canada Homes will be multiplied by attracting private capital, investors, and developers to expand the housing supply.

We are putting the conditions in place to catalyze maximum investment and enable builders to build big and build now.

Canada can significantly increase its supply of affordable housing and become a global leader in housing innovation, including construction techniques, sustainable materials, and leading-edge manufacturing.

Canadians must understand that the road ahead will not always be easy. It will require a national mobilization unlike anything we have seen since the end of the Second World War.

Change on this scale is never easy, but it is essential, and for a Canada that is united and determined, it is achievable.

So, to finish, Canadians have given our new government a mandate to build a stronger Canada, to build a country where Canadians are empowered with more opportunities that help you get ahead, with lower costs, safer communities, and homes you can afford.

That's the foundation on which you can build your life, how you want it, and where you want it.

By building smart, building Canadian, building now, we are building Canada strong.

Thank you very much.