Liberal leader Mark Carney said he expects to have “very strong and productive co-operation” with Premier David Eby on replacing the George Massey Tunnel during a campaign stop in Delta Tuesday morning (April 8) to promote aspects of the party's housing plan released on March 31.
Carney, joined by Delta MP hopeful Jill McKnight and other Lower Mainland candidates, held the press conference at Intelligent City in Tilbury, a company that uses mass timber products and robotics technology to make prefabricated carbon-neutral housing.
The Liberal leader tied Tuesday's “announcement” to the United States’ plan to more than double tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber, saying our country’s forest resources can instead be used to build affordable homes here, creating higher-paying jobs in the process and strengthening Canada’s economy.
“While the U.S. is trying to keep high-quality, sustainable Canadian lumber out, we will use more of it here in our plan to double the pace of housing construction in this country over the course of the next 10 years” Carney said.
“This is the most ambitious housing plan since the Second World War. We will build our way out of the housing crisis. We will build our way out of the economic crisis. We will make housing more affordable in Canada once again.”
A central part of the Liberal’s housing plan is the creation of a new entity called “Build Canada Homes” (BDC) that will “get the federal government back into the business of building affordable homes at scale, including on public lands” by offering more than $25 billion in financing for innovative prefabricated home builders in Canada, allowing factories to scale up production, including through bulk orders of units from manufacturers to create sustained demand
Carney said Canada’s softwood lumber industry and mass timber technologies like those in use at Intelligent City are central to his party’s strategy to increase the pace of residential construction to almost 500,000 new homes a year and “address failures in the housing market head-on, unleashing the power of public-private co-operation at a scale not seen in generations.”
“Build Canada Homes will catalyze an entirely new housing industry, with Canadian lumber at the centre of it,” he said.
“The way we build homes needs to change. Prefabricated and modular housing are the future. They can drive down time to completion by up to 50 per cent, they can reduce costs by up to 20 per cent, emissions by over 20 per cent compared to traditional construction methods,and Canada should be the world leader in this new industry. And as you can see here, we are already well positioned to do so.”
Following his speech, Carney took questions from media, including whether his meeting with B.C. Premier David Eby on Monday (April 7) included discussion of federal funding to offset the cost of replacing the George Massey Tunnel connecting Delta and Richmond along Highway 99.
Carney said he and Eby had a “very constructive” meeting, focused largely on Canada’s strategy with respect to U.S. tariffs and softwood lumber exports while also touching on the federal government’s $20-million fund to support B.C.’s forestry sector and how the Liberal Party’s housing plan can further support the industry.
“We had a quite a comprehensive discussion,” he said
With respect to the Highway 99 Tunnel program, Carney pointed to the party’s announcement last month of a planned $5-billion Trade Diversification Corridor Fund to accelerate nation-building projects at ports, railroads, inland terminals, airports and highways.
“I fully understand the pressing need for progress here — you can just see it this morning driving here, but I understand it on a deeper, technical level. So we’re putting in place the tools. I expect to have very strong and productive co-operation with Premier Eby’s government on this and other [projects],” he said.
