Canada's Housing Crisis Spurs Push for Modular and Mass‑Timber Construction

Ontario’s housing market is in distress, with housing starts at their lowest level since 2009 and a five‑fold rise in condo cancellations between 2022 and 2025. The provincial government has abandoned its pledge to build 1.5 million new homes by 2031, leaving developers vulnerable.

Innovative building methods—modular construction, mass‑timber structures, robotics and low‑carbon concrete—are being promoted as solutions. The University of Toronto’s School of Cities estimates modular construction can cut costs by 10‑25 %. Companies such as BECC Construction, Nexii, Nomodic Modular Structures and Assembly Corp. are pursuing these approaches, with Assembly recently restructuring to avoid bankruptcy. The federal Build Canada Homes agency and MaRS’s Better Buildings mission are supporting the shift, and former Bank of England governor Mark Carney visited a pilot modular‑housing facility in British Columbia, calling the firms “the future of housing construction in this country.”