Carney’s Plan May Make Canada the Housing Factory of the World - Bloomberg

Canada's Prime Minister Pushes Country to Become the Housing Factory of the World

On the outskirts of Toronto, a factory buzzing with activity is being touted as solution to the two most urgent crises facing Canada: the unaffordable cost o: housing and US President Donald Trump's trade war.

This plant makes key parts of houses - specifically, walls, floors and roofs -that can be shipped to a site and assembled into structures as tall as six stories quicker than traditional methods.

But the factory is operating at about half capacity, said Tad Putyra, who lead the low-rise division of homebuilder Great Gulf. On a recent tour, he pointed a section occupied by stacks of wooden beams where he'd like to bring in a German machine that would automate part of the process. But he won't add until he's confident there will be enough demand to warrant the additional supply.

The prefabricated housing industry has long touted itself as a way to ramp UI the production of new residences to relieve Canada's housing shortage. But financing struggles, unpredictable demand and inconsistent zoning rules hav kept it from becoming a big player in the market.

"If I have revenue, then I can scale up everything on the other side," Putyra said. "Very quickly we could scale up to double our production." 

That's where Liberal Party Leader Mark Carney, who's running to remain prime minister in the country's April 28 election, might come in. The central plank of his housing platform is a Qian to make government both a customer and financier of factories like Putyra's.

It amounts to a promise to help the industry achieve economies of scale that could lower home prices nationwide, while creating manufacturing jobs that could replace some of the ones being lost due to US tariffs.

Canada is not the only country facing a housing shortage. Nor is it the only 01 where factory-built housing has struggled to gain acceptance. Two researche1 recently found that, even though sale prices for prefabricated homes in the U are often less than half of what it would cost to build a similar one on site, tht products have yet to see wide adoption. .       

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