Minister France-Élaine Duranceau’s strategy for tackling the housing crisis has been revealed very late, in the eyes of housing industry players who have been calling for an emergency plan for months, if not years.
“It’s surprising that an action plan that the government has been working on for four years is not more consistent,” laments the spokesperson for the Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU), Véronique Laflamme.
The activist points out that the CAQ was holding consultations on a housing action plan as early as 2021. A forum was then held by the then Minister responsible for Housing, Andrée Laforest.
Appointed Minister of Housing in 2022, France-Élaine Duranceau was quickly asked for a game plan on the matter. In the months that followed, the opposition hounded her on this subject session after session during question period.
In August 2023, after holding new consultations, she promised an action plan “in the coming months”.
The Association of Construction and Housing Professionals of Quebec (APCHQ) also finds that it was very late. “We have been asking for a strategy with our partners for over a year. So, we certainly found that it was quite long,” notes the APCHQ’s communications director, Karine Casault.
A necessary delay to see bigger
When asked about this, the minister’s office said that the release of the plan had to be postponed in order to include other ministries in the process. “The initial work only concerned the Société d’habitation du Québec (SHQ),” said a source in the office.
The SHQ is the organization that manages social and affordable housing financing programs.
However, at the turn of 2024, the minister’s entourage decided to involve several other ministries and organizations such as the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, the Régie du bâtiment, the Commission de la construction and the Ministry of Culture, which oversees the protection of heritage. “The scale of the crisis merited an interdepartmental solution.”
The strategy, which is detailed in a 72-page document, contains dozens of measures and initiatives, but no new money. Some of the measures are already known, such as the ability for cities to waive their planning regulations to launch projects or the new protections given to older tenants.
Focus on prefabricated housing
Among the new features, the strategy explains how the government intends to support modular construction, not for houses, but for multi-unit buildings. The document calls these “fabricated solutions.”
This will include launching a call for tenders this fall for “digital models of prefabricated housing,” which should lead to the creation of 500 new housing units. A government committee on “prefabrication” will also be set up, and the state will distribute guides and guidelines to support private players in the field.
The strategy also provides for new regulatory relief to reduce “obstacles” to projects. This is where the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of the Environment will be asked to give ground. The Ministry of the Environment will have to better “support developers” to limit “procedures associated with non-compliance”. And officials from the Ministry of Culture will have to “continue to optimize the progress of projects” when there are heritage issues.
The government will also create a “surplus property inventory” for potential housing, and plans to do the same with churches and other religious buildings.
Finally, social economy enterprises and the SHQ itself will have access to new tools for creating financial packages and developing new projects.
A timid step in the right direction
The government has committed to building 23,000 new housing units by 2029. It has set itself the target of 115,000 more housing starts than already planned by 2034 to counter the current shortage (for a total of 560,000 over ten years).
But that’s not enough, interest groups note. “This is less than half of the recommendation of the Housing and Climate Task Force, with a longer timeline,” says the organization Vivre en ville, which nevertheless welcomes the desire to mobilize all ministries behind the plan.
The Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) also finds that the target of 115,000 is too modest, noting that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) recommends the creation of 1.3 million more housing units by 2030, or 150,000 per year. The MEI also finds that the deregulation measures lack “bite.”
As for the FRAPRU cited above, it finds that “the mountain is giving birth to a mouse” with this strategy. “Even the pilot project for modular housing that will be launched shortly has been in the pipeline for several months,” argues its spokesperson.