OTTAWA, ON (March 24, 2026):
Despite record construction employment in Canada, housing completions remain weak. Builders are producing larger, higher-end homes more efficiently, but are getting worse at delivering housing at scale.
In More Hammers, Fewer Homes: Why a construction labour surge isn’t ending Canada’s housing crisis, authors Murtaza Haider, Simeon Ranxha, Meet Shah, Chris McCulloch, and Stephen Moranis investigate the decline of residential construction productivity in Canada.
Crucially, the report argues that widely used productivity measures – based on construction value – mask a long-running decline in the industry’s ability to deliver housing at scale.
“The historical record demonstrates that Canada once achieved substantially higher housing output with a smaller workforce,” the authors note.
“Understanding and reversing productivity declines is therefore essential to ensuring that the construction industry can deliver more housing with the resources already available to it.”
The authors examine Canada’s residential construction productivity decline through three lenses: changes in output relative to labour over time, the factors driving the slowdown, and the policies needed to reverse it.
They conclude that regulatory complexity, labour force dynamics, and slow technology adoption have all contributed to reducing efficiency, and call for a shift toward a productivity-driven housing strategy that:
- Encourages greater capital investment and mechanization in construction.
- Enables builders to operate across regulatory jurisdictions.
- Accelerates the adoption of modular and off-site construction methods.
- Improves regulatory coordination to reduce delays and compliance burdens.
- Uses better productivity metrics that reflect both housing volume and value.
“While supply-side barriers such as restrictive zoning, approval delays, and rising development charges remain significant, the residential construction sector must also confront its internal productivity challenge,” the authors conclude.
“Addressing these structural impediments will be critical if Canada is to meet its housing needs and avoid the productivity trap that has constrained construction industries across much of the developed world.”
To learn more, read the full paper here:
Murtaza Haider is a professor and the Radhe Krishna Gupta Executive Chair in Cities and Communities at the Alberta School of Business, as well as the executive director of the Cities Institute at the University of Alberta.
Simeon Ranxha is a research assistant at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Urban Analytics Institute.
Meet Shah is a consultant with Cushman and Wakefield in Toronto and holds a doctorate in Real Estate Management from Toronto Metropolitan University.
Chris McCulloch is pursuing a master’s at the Department of Real Estate Management at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Stephen Moranis is a real estate strategist, industry veteran, and columnist with Postmedia Network.
For further information, media are invited to contact:
Skander Belouizdad
Communications Officer
(613) 482-8327 x111
Skander.belouizdad@macdonaldlaurier.ca
