Canada’s housing crisis has reached a critical inflection point, and modular and prefabricated construction is no longer a fringe solution. It is now central to the country’s response. A recent RBC Thought Leadership report warns that Canada must deliver as many as 480,000 housing units annually through 2035 to restore affordability and meet projected demand, a target impossible to reach through conventional construction alone.

 

The federal government has moved decisively. In September 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney launched Build Canada Homes, a $13 billion federal agency tasked with building 4,000 modular homes across six cities Dartmouth, Longueuil, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Edmonton, on federal land, with capacity to scale to 45,000. Alongside this, the government committed over $25 billion in financing directed specifically at prefabricated homebuilders, signalling a generational shift in how Canada intends to build.

 

Regulatory reform is following. The 2026 Spring Economic Update committed to eliminating redundant factory and site inspections, establishing performance-based approval pathways for modular and panelised systems, and improving consistency in how National Building Code requirements are interpreted across jurisdictions. CMHC has also introduced a new Prefab Plus mortgage product and expanded its full multi-unit mortgage insurance suite to modular construction, closing a financing gap that has long held the industry back.

Canada’s prefabricated construction market grew at a CAGR of 5.8% between 2021 and 2025 and is projected to reach CAD 18.07 billion by 2030. But the real challenge now is execution, scaling supply chains, growing a skilled workforce, and aligning fragmented regulatory environments across provinces before the window closes.

 

The 6th Annual Modular Construction & Prefabrication by Trueventus will bring together developers, policymakers, engineers, and industry leaders to move beyond the conversation and into the work, sharing what’s been built, what’s stalled, and what it will take to deliver at the scale Canada urgently needs.