The federal Liberal government plans to provide $600 million in loans and funding to help make it easier and cheaper to build housing for property owners and tenants.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the announcement in Calgary, the latest in a string of pre-budget announcements aimed at winning over young voters.
"Younger generations like millennials and Gen Z feel like they're falling behind because the cost of housing is so high," Trudeau said.
"It's not okay – it needs to change. ”
Trudeau said $50 million of that will be used to establish a homebuilding technology and innovation fund, and another $50 million will be used to modernize and accelerate construction.
An additional $500 million in low-cost loans will facilitate projects that adopt "innovative" building technologies, including prefabricated and modular housing manufacturers and other builders.
Housing Minister Sean Fraser said Canada is experiencing a housing crisis, but it doesn't have to be that way in the future.
"But that will require us to act differently," he said, adding that more announcements would be made in the coming weeks.
Finance Minister Christia Freeland will present the next federal budget on April 16.
Mr. Trudeau has regularly attended a series of press conferences across Canada, a move that comes after months of often fierce political attacks blaming the Liberal Party's inaction for the housing crisis.
At a news conference on Friday, Trudeau was asked by reporters whether his administration would extend the amortization period of insured mortgages to 30 years or more, beyond the current 25 years.
The Prime Minister did not comment directly on this, but he did say that news about the mortgage was about to be announced.
"Regarding mortgages, we'll have more information around the April 16 budget date, and maybe we'll leave that until April 16," Trudeau said.
Over the past two weeks, Trudeau and his cabinet ministers have made a series of pre-budget announcements on housing, but so far most have focused on rental housing.
Last week, Trudeau promised his government that it would ensure tenants get credit for on-time rent payments when they apply for mortgages. "We will revise the Canada Mortgage Charter and call on landlords, banks, credit bureaus and fintech companies to ensure that your rental history is factored into your credit score," the statement said.
Some experts have been pushing for an extension of the amortization period to give younger first-time homebuyers better access to Canada's expensive housing market.
"Why do we tell 35-year-olds that they have to pay for their house before they turn 60?" Mike Moffat, policy director at the Smart Prosperity Institute, a think tank, and a former economic adviser to Trudeau, said in an interview with Bloomberg last month.
On Friday, Conservative housing critic Scott Acheson said in a statement that Trudeau had "announced a 'new' plan in terms of innovation, when in fact a similar plan already exists, and re-announced two other existing plans".
"All of these are policies that he already has in place, and those policies have led to a doubling of the cost of housing. ”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said on Friday that she was not interested in string-attached federal funding "if that means we can't build the kind of housing we need."
Smith said she hopes the model of federal-provincial cooperation between Alberta and the federal government will be similar to that with Quebec, as a healthier relationship that allows both parties to collectively decide where federal funds are spent.
Federal NDP housing critic Jenny Kwan blamed the federal government and its Conservative predecessors for failing to prioritize building affordable housing.