It's great to be back in Calgary. George, it's great to see you so soon, it seems I was just here a few weeks ago. But as always, your outstanding work and being such a strong voice for folks here and for all of Canada, I really appreciate. Great to have you here, George.

Thank you, Mark, for having us here at NRB Modular Solutions in Calgary. Thank you, especially, to all of you who are working so hard to innovate new solutions, to work in new ways to deliver more and more the housing and the infrastructure that Canadians need right across the country. It is a really, really amazing thing to see the innovation and the hard work that you are delivering every single day, making the country better and fairer for all Canadians. I’m also happy to be here with Ministers Fraser and Boissonnault.

Now, for more than a week now, I've been talking about new measures in our upcoming budget to make the housing market fairer for every generation. Younger generations, like Millennials and Gen Z, feel like they're falling behind because housing costs are just too high. That’s not okay and it needs to change. For Canada to succeed, we need everyone to succeed, which is why we're tackling head on the challenge of building more homes faster, and we need everyone in this country to join us on this mission.

When we talk about building homes faster, we also have to talk about innovation. One of the keys to increasing supply faster is to change the way homes are built—building better and smarter.

We want to accelerate the pace of home construction to levels not seen since the end of the Second World War. To do that, we need to change our approach and adopt innovative technologies. We need more made-in-Canada success stories like here at NRB Modular Solutions, the largest modular building solutions provider in the country, and more centralized manufacturing sites where the best workers in the world, Canadian workers, can build faster for cheaper all year round, with the help of innovative solutions around robotics, AI and innovation.

That's why in Budget 2024, we will announce a package of over $600 million specifically for innovative housing solutions. This package will… yeah, you can applaud for that, yeah!

(Applause)

This package will include the launch of a new $50 million Homebuilding Technology and Innovation Fund. The goal of this fund will be to provide more homes, faster, by scaling up and promoting innovative technologies and materials like modular and prefabricated homes. The package will also include another $50 million to modernize and expedite home building through the regional development agencies.

The upcoming budget will invest over $600 million in a range of measures to encourage innovative housing solutions. Measures like the new $50 million Homebuilding Technology and Innovation Fund, and another $50 million through regional development agencies to support 3D printing, robotics and mass timber construction all across the country.

We will also revive and modernize the government's post-war housing design catalog with up to 50 new designs for row housing, duplexes, fourplexes and other high-density designs that we need to build at scale, faster. We know that builders want to be able to build quickly and right for Canadians, the permitting can be accelerated when we draw from these catalogs for these more high-density housing, it'll help the work people are doing here, it'll help build more homes right across the country that families can get into quicker.

Also, as part of this new package through the Apartment Construction Loan Program, we'll also deliver $500 million in low-cost financing to support projects using innovative techniques from prefabricated and modular housing manufacturers and other home builders.

Sean will be able to provide more details in a few moments, but the important thing to remember is that we're taking major steps to increase the supply of housing quickly, and innovation and technology are at the heart of our plan to get there. All generations deserve a fair shot at success, including Millennials and Gen Z.

We're focused on fairness for every generation. We're focused on building more housing supply to make homes more affordable. We're fighting every day for an economy that works for everyone.