Carney Promised to Build Homes ‘at a Pace Not Seen Since World War II.’ The Privy Council Focus-Grouped the Slogan. The PBO Says the Plan Delivers 5,200 Homes a Year.

Privy Council documents first obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter reveal that the federal government commissioned focus groups to test which marketing techniques and catchphrases would most effectively convince Canadians that Ottawa was addressing the housing crisis. The resulting “branding concepts,” as the documents describe them, were not policy proposals. They were messaging strategies — tested on groups of Canadians to determine what language would, in Blacklock’s phrasing, “best resonate” with the public. The phrase that emerged — building homes “at a pace not seen since the Second World War” — became the centrepiece of Mark Carney’s 2025 election housing platform.¹

The slogan was not derived from an engineering assessment of Canada’s construction capacity. It was not drawn from a fiscal plan that had been costed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. It was not the product of consultations with provincial housing ministers or the Canadian Home Builders’ Association. It was the output of a Privy Council focus group exercise designed to identify which words would make Canadians feel better about a crisis that has worsened under a decade of Liberal government.

On March 31, 2025, during the federal election campaign, Carney unveiled what the Liberal Party called “Canada’s most ambitious housing plan since the Second World War.” The centrepiece was a pledge to double the pace of residential construction to nearly 500,000 new homes a year over the next decade. The vehicle for that pledge was a new federal entity called Build Canada Homes — described as a “lean, mission-driven organization” that would get the government “back into the business of home building.” Build Canada Homes would provide over $25 billion in financing to innovative prefabricated home builders, plus $10 billion in low-cost financing and capital for affordable housing. The launch included a campaign stop in Vaughan, Ontario, where Carney said the plan would “unleash the power of public/private co-operation at a scale not seen in generations.”²

Build Canada Homes was formally launched in September 2025 with an initial investment of $13 billion. Six direct-build projects were announced in Dartmouth, Longueuil, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. Partnerships were signed with four provinces. The Housing Minister was Gregor Robertson, the former mayor of Vancouver. The language remained ambitious. The numbers, when they arrived, were not.

On December 2, 2025, the Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report titled “Build Canada Homes and the Outlook for Housing Programs under Budget 2025.” The findings were devastating. The PBO projected that Build Canada Homes would add just 26,000 units to the total housing supply across Canada over five years — an average of 5,200 homes per year. That represents a 2.1% increase over the PBO’s baseline projection for new home construction. Of those 26,000 units, only about half — roughly 13,000 — would be affordable homes for low-income Canadians.³

The PBO also found that just 14,000 of the units Build Canada Homes claims to support would not have been built without the agency’s involvement. The rest would have been constructed anyway. Interim PBO Jason Jacques put it plainly: “Build Canada Homes is expected to add only a modest amount to the housing supply.” Conservative Shadow Housing Minister Scott Aitchison translated the number more bluntly: “Mark Carney’s new housing bureaucracy will build only 5,000 homes per year, which is barely one per cent of the 500,000 homes that he promised during the election.”⁴

The PBO report contained a second finding that may be more consequential than the first. Federal planned spending on housing programs is set to decline 56%, from $9.8 billion in 2025-26 to $4.3 billion in 2028-29. The decline is driven by the expiry of funding for the Housing Accelerator Fund, the Affordable Housing Fund, the Canada Housing Benefit, and several Indigenous housing envelopes. Build Canada Homes is not replacing those programs. It is arriving as they disappear.⁵

Dylan Carr / Unsplash — The PBO found that federal housing spending will decline 56%, from $9.8 billion in 2025-26 to $4.3 billion in 2028-29, as the Housing Accelerator Fund, Affordable Housing Fund, and Canada Housing Benefit expire. Build Canada Homes fills a fraction of the gap it replaces.

The PBO calculates that Canada needs to build 690,000 additional housing units by 2035, on top of what is already being built, to restore housing affordability. Build Canada Homes’ projected contribution of 26,000 units represents 3.7% of that gap. The Liberal government’s flagship housing promise — the one tested in focus groups, announced at a campaign rally, and repeated in every debate — would close less than four per cent of the housing gap it claims to address.⁶

The broken promises extend beyond the headline number. Carney pledged during the campaign to cut municipal development charges in half for a period of five years. The Canadian Home Builders’ Association said after the 2025 budget that the government “unfortunately retreats from the Liberal platform’s commitment to work with municipalities to reduce development taxes by 50 percent.” Development charges, which the association notes have risen 700% over the past two decades, remain among the largest cost drivers for new housing. The promise to halve them was the most concrete affordability measure in the platform. It was abandoned in the budget.⁷

The PBO also noted that after promising “generational investments” in social and low-income housing, the Carney government is actually slashing spending on social, low-income, and Indigenous housing by 56% as existing programs expire. The Conservatives’ Aitchison summarized: “Despite spending $219 million just on bureaucrats to run the new office, it’s unclear why Build Canada Homes was ever needed. According to the PBO, ‘BCH will fund the same types of projects as were funded under CMHC’s Affordable Housing Fund, with the same unit costs and the same distribution of affordability.'”⁸

Separate Privy Council research, also obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter, found that few Canadians believe Housing Minister Gregor Robertson is on the right track. Federal focus groups found that a large proportion of Canadians were resigned to waiting years for “tangible results” from the housing plan. The government’s own internal research shows the public does not believe the plan will work. The government’s response has been to commission more focus groups on what language might change that perception.⁹

The Fraser Institute’s analysis of Build Canada Homes warned that the agency “may simply reshuffle limited resources” rather than increase the total housing stock, noting that Canada has a severe shortage of skilled construction labour and that the construction workforce grew by only 18.4% over the last decade. The institute concluded: “It’s hard to see how Carney’s housing plan would double the pace of homebuilding in Canada.” The University of Toronto and CMHC have both cautioned that current building quality oversight is already inadequate, and a construction boom without corresponding inspection capacity could produce the same shoddy-build problems that marked past housing frenzies.¹⁰

The arithmetic is simple. Carney promised 500,000 homes a year. The PBO says the plan delivers 5,200 additional homes a year. That is a gap of 494,800 homes per year between the promise and the projection. Canada currently builds approximately 227,000 homes annually. To reach 500,000, the country would need to more than double its construction workforce, its materials supply chain, its municipal approval capacity, and its inspection infrastructure — simultaneously, while housing program spending is being cut by more than half.¹¹

No detailed plan to achieve the 500,000 target has been released. The PBO noted this directly: “The government has not yet set out any plan to achieve this goal.” The phrase was repeated by the PBO in December 2025 and has not been addressed since. The plan to build homes “at a pace not seen since the Second World War” exists as a campaign slogan, a Privy Council-tested catchphrase, and a six-project pilot. It does not exist as a costed, detailed, construction-ready strategy.¹²

Mark Carney promised during the 2025 election to build homes “at a pace not seen since the Second World War.” Privy Council documents obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter show the phrase was the output of federal focus groups commissioned to identify which “branding concepts” would most effectively relieve Canadians’ anxiety about housing. The Parliamentary Budget Officer says Build Canada Homes will add 26,000 units in five years — 5,200 a year — representing 2.1% of baseline construction and 3.7% of the housing gap. Federal housing spending is being cut 56%, from $9.8 billion to $4.3 billion, as the Housing Accelerator Fund, the Affordable Housing Fund, and multiple Indigenous housing envelopes expire. The promise to halve development charges was abandoned in the budget. The PBO says the government “has not yet set out any plan” to reach the 500,000-homes-a-year target. The government’s own internal focus groups found that most Canadians are resigned to waiting years for “tangible results.” The Privy Council tested the slogan. The PBO tested the math. The slogan won. The math did not. That is not a housing plan. It is a messaging strategy with a $13-billion price tag and a 2.1% result.