Federal budget money will help N.L. homes get built faster, says deputy PM
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was in Mount Pearl on Wednesday to tout housing funding in the federal budget. (Heather Gillis/CBC)
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland says funding announcements made in the federal budget will get homes built faster — something Newfoundland and Labrador needs to do to meet current and future demand.
"We need supply, supply, supply," Freeland told reporters at the site of a new apartment complex in Mount Pearl on Wednesday. "This is our country's most pressing need."
A recent report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimates that Newfoundland and Labrador needs to build 60,000 more new homes by 2030 than what is currently being built.
Freeland is one of several ministers who've been sent across Canada touting housing funding in this year's federal budget, including $500 million to build more homes on public land, unlock federal land for housing and accelerate timelines to build affordable homes faster.
Freeland said she believes initiatives announced in the budget will help achieve that goal.
"Every day we have to get more and more and more ambitious on housing. In the budget we put forward a plan to build nearly four million homes in Canada," she said.
"I think the key to it is what you're seeing today, which is all levels of government working together, and government and the private sector working together.… We have to do more, faster. That's what we're going to continue to do."
To meet the goal of 60,000 extra new homes, Alexis Foster, executive director of the provincial chapter of the Canadian Home Builders' Association, told CBC News earlier this month that builders would need to average 10,000 builds a year to reach that goal. The province's best year historically is around 3,300 homes.
Newfoundland MP and Federal Labour Minister Seamus O'Regan stressed the need for collaboration at all levels of government in order to expedite builds.
"Housing's the name of the game right now, and it really requires all hands on deck."
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