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A newly formed coalition representing some of Canada’s largest home builders and rental providers has tabled a set of federal policy proposals aimed at reversing steep declines in housing activity in Toronto and the country’s biggest cities. Known as the Large Urban Centre Alliance, the group brings together 13 major industry players from metropolitan regions that collectively produce more than half of Canada’s annual housing starts.
Facilitated by the Missing Middle Initiative and the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), the Alliance has delivered its first major submission to Ottawa’s 2025 pre-budget consultations, calling for targeted measures to address cost pressures, unlock investment, and keep housing delivery on track in high-growth urban markets.
New and pre-construction home sales have dropped sharply in several of the country’s largest markets, signalling a prolonged slowdown in housing starts. Compared to the first quarter of 2022, sales in Q1 2025 were down 89% in the Greater Toronto Area, 77% in Greater Vancouver, and 51% in Ottawa. With construction activity typically lagging sales, these regions face the prospect of sustained low output for years to come. In the GTA alone, the slowdown puts an estimated 41,000 jobs and more than $6 billion in annual tax revenue at risk.
“Canada needs to double housing starts to address the current shortage, yet housing starts and sales are falling in some of Canada’s largest cities, as the cost of building homes makes homebuilding unviable,” said Dr. Mike Moffatt, Founding Director of the Missing Middle Initiative and co-facilitator of the Large Urban Centre Alliance.
Formed in May, 2025 following BILD’s push for a broader GST/HST rebate program, the Large Urban Centre Alliance brings together developers and rental providers from Metro Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, the Greater Toronto Area, and Grand Montréal. Its 13 members include DiamondCorp, Fitzrovia, Mattamy Homes, Menkes, RioCan, and Wesgroup.
“This is the first time Canada’s major urban builders have come together to present a unified national voice on housing, grounded in real-world experience and a shared sense of urgency,” said Beau Jarvis, President & CEO of Wesgroup.
Among the four short-term measures the Alliance prioritizes are expanding the GST/HST rebate for three years to all buyers of homes up to $1 million, extending partial rebates for those between $1 million and $1.5 million, exempting in-progress purpose-built rentals from GST/HST while easing foreign buyer restrictions under an Australian-style framework, directing municipalities to bill development charges to purchasers rather than embedding them in project costs, and boosting CMHC’s Apartment Construction Loan Program to handle more projects.
The Alliance’s six long-term proposals focus on sustaining housing supply. Some recommendations borrow from international examples, such as Australia’s foreign buyer policy and U.S. rules that exempt certain real estate from the Excessive Interest and Financing Expenses Limitation. Others draw on Canadian precedents, such as the 1970s version of the Multiple Unit Residential Building program, or municipal best practices like Edmonton’s automated development approvals. The Alliance emphasizes that these measures are designed to build upon, rather than replace, existing federal initiatives, thereby increasing the likelihood of swift adoption.
Despite a near quadrupling of purpose-built rental construction over the past decade, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation projects the GTA’s rental demand will exceed supply by 121,000 units over the next ten years, on top of an existing shortfall of 114,000 units accumulated between 2016 and 2024. Nationally, CMHC estimates an additional 60,000 rental units are needed beyond what is already in the pipeline, underscoring the scale of the supply gap even as market activity slows.
“At a time when residential construction should be accelerating, the industry has come to a virtual standstill,” said Brad Carr, CEO of Mattamy Homes Canada. “It is imperative that we work collaboratively with all levels of government to shape policies that stimulate essential demand in the short term, while simultaneously addressing the longer-term challenge of increasing much-needed housing supply.”
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