In a rare Sunday announcement, the Government of Canada unveiled the Canada Public Land Bank, the first step of the Public Lands for Homes Plan that the federal government committed to in Budget 2024.

The Canada Public Land Bank is an inventory of federally-owned properties across the country that the government has identified as being able to support new housing development.

However, rather than selling the properties to builders, which has traditionally been the model, the Government of Canada will instead be making the properties available via long-term leases, allowing the government to retain some control over the land and its uses, such as ensuring a certain level of affordability.

"Under the new plan, we will partner with the housing sector and communities to build homes on every site suitable for housing across the federal portfolio," the Government of Canada said in a press release on Sunday. "Wherever possible, we will do it with a novel long-term lease, not a one-time sale, to ensure every site has affordable housing and public land stays public."

One of the biggest barriers when it comes to housing affordability, especially in markets like Toronto and Vancouver, is the high price of land, a hard cost that developers have to absorb and eventually gets passed on to the end user.

This model of leasing the land hopes to alleviate that and was inspired by British Columbia's BC Builds program, which was announced in March and now has several projects underway.

"We need to build more homes in Canada, and one of the largest costs in building is land," added Minister of Housing, Infrastructure, and Communities Sean Fraser. "By building on public lands, we can make it easier to build, and by leasing those same properties, we can make sure the homes built stay affordable for the long term."

In Sunday's announcement, the federal government unveiled a list of 56 properties, amounting to 305 hectares of land, with five properties currently requesting proposals "on how organizations or businesses could use the following properties to enable new, affordable, sustainable, accessible and socially inclusive housing." Those five properties are:

  • Ottawa – Wateridge Village (370 Codd’s Road and 800 Winisik Street)
  • Edmonton – Village at Griesbach – Sir Arthur Currie Way
  • Calgary – Currie – 3830 Quesnay Wood Drive Southwest
  • Toronto – Arbo – 1350 Sheppard Avenue West
  • Montréal – 125 Houde Street

The 56 properties are spread out across the country, with 32 in Ontario, seven in Nova Scotia, six in Alberta, five in Quebec, two in British Columbia, two in the Northwest Territories, and one in each of Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

The announcement is long overdue, however. Conducting an inventory of federal land to see what could be made available for housing development was something the Liberals first promised in September 2015, as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pointed out on Sunday.

Nonetheless, as part of its Public Lands for Homes Plan, which is just one component of the overall housing plan – called Canada's Housing Plan – the federal government is also hoping to improve the efficiency of the Canada Lands Company, the self-financing Crown corporation that develops excess federal land.

"Canada Lands Company is an essential actor in the development of federal lands," said the federal government on Sunday. "As per Budget 2024, the government will evolve and adapt the mandate of Canada Lands Company to allow the organization to deliver housing solutions more quickly under the new Public Lands for Homes Plan."

Over the weekend, Minister of Public Services and Procurement Jean-Yves Duclos also published an open letter to the Canada Lands Company outlining the expectations for the company.

Furthermore, the Government of Canada says that it will also be "accelerating its real property disposal process to match the speed of builders and the urgency of getting affordable homes built for Canada," with Procurement Canada adopting a set of service time standards.

Recently, Procurement Canada also appointed Emily Wehbi as Director General, Public Lands and Housing Sector. The federal government said on Sunday that it is also currently in the process of launching a $500 million Public Lands Acquisition Fund that will allow it buy land owned by other levels of government, which was also announced in Budget 2024.

More new measures, along with more details about the 56 properties, are expected to be announced in the coming months.

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