Canada's 2026 budget promises $45 billion for Build Canada Homes and vows to end homelessness in ten years
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Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne unveiled a $45 billion capitalization for the new Crown corporation Build Canada Homes, pairing a bold housing expansion with a decade-long pledge to eliminate homelessness and invest in non-market housing, Indigenous housing, and income supports.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne tabled the 2026 federal budget on Thursday, presenting a housing plan that, on paper, at least, tries to confront a crisis decades in the making. The three-part strategy promises to end homelessness within ten years, triple non-market housing construction, and modernise a housing market that has repeatedly failed ordinary people. The budget earmarks $45 billion in total for the newly created Crown corporation Build Canada Homes (BCH), with the expectation that it will deliver 200,000 new homes across Canada over the next decade. At least 10 per cent of BCH’s funding is designated for Indigenous housing projects, a long-overdue recognition of the depth of the housing emergency in Indigenous communities.
"Tonight, thousands of Canadians will sleep in shelters or on the street, with none of the security or stability that adequate housing provides. We can do better. We must do better. And we will do better," Champagne said in the House of Commons.
The budget also creates a $1.8 billion Integrated Supports Fund under BCH to finance transitional and supportive housing that combines health, addiction and social services. An additional $3.6 billion will be provided for capital costs of these units, while provinces and territories are expected to cover operations and wrap-around services. The scale of the need is enormous, and the plan makes clear that housing alone is not enough if governments do not also fund the support systems people need to survive and recover.
Funding for existing programs such as the Reaching Home initiative and the Veterans Homelessness Program will be renewed for another ten years, with $2.1 billion allocated to the Housing Department for this purpose. The government will require “rigorous reporting” on program outcomes, a basic safeguard given the long history of promises made and crises left unresolved.
To accelerate non-market housing, the budget proposes to triple the annual start rate to 24,000 units, providing BCH with $13 billion over ten years beginning in 2028-29. An additional $1.5 billion is set aside for infrastructure such as water and roads on federal land to enable new development. These are necessary public investments, but they also underline how much the private market has failed to deliver housing people can actually afford.
Other measures include extending the ban on foreign homebuyers until January 2029, adjusting mortgage-insurance rules to support “missing-middle” homes, and allocating $22 billion over five years for broader affordability initiatives, including a one-time top-up to the GST credit and increased funding for Nutrition North Canada. The package suggests the government knows that housing unaffordability is tied to poverty, food insecurity and stagnant incomes, even if it still leans heavily on indirect fixes.
The budget also proposes changes to the Canada Workers Benefit, temporary increases to Employment Insurance weeks for apprentices, and making the Canada Caregiver Credit refundable, measures aimed at reducing poverty and supporting vulnerable households. Whether these commitments are enough will depend on implementation, accountability and whether governments finally treat housing as a human need rather than a speculative asset.