As the national voice for professional planners, the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP) represents over 10,000 diverse professionals and has supported Canada’s planning community since 1919. Our members work in both the public and private sectors, across fields such as planning, environmental resource management, land development, heritage conservation, social planning, transportation planning, and economic development. They work in communities of all sizes across the country, bringing critical on-the-ground expertise that shapes our regions and neighbourhoods. Professional planners play a central role in translating federal housing ambitions into on-the-ground outcomes, working across jurisdictions to align housing, infrastructure, and community and economic development.
CIP welcomes the opportunity to share its recommendations with the Standing Committee on Finance in advance of the 2026 federal budget.
Canada’s housing efforts are not falling short due to a lack of ambition, but rather to misalignments among policy, capacity, and delivery systems. Recent federal initiatives, including Build Canada Homes, signal important leadership and a renewed commitment to improving housing supply; however, new tools alone will not resolve the housing crisis if underlying system constraints remain unaddressed.
Addressing Canada’s housing challenges requires more than increasing supply. It requires ensuring that the right types of housing are built, that communities have the capacity to deliver them, and that housing investments are aligned with long-term community needs.
Recommendations
- Prioritize federal funding, programs, and lands to expand non-market, deeply affordable, and supportive housing, addressing gaps not met through current market-based initiatives.
- Commit to a renewed fiscal framework (“New Deal”) for municipalities to expand revenue opportunities and better align municipal revenue sources with their responsibilities.
- Better align federal infrastructure funding with housing and economic growth priorities.
- Provide targeted funding to strengthen local planning capacity in under-resourced communities, including rural, northern, remote, and Indigenous communities, and support their participation in major federal housing, infrastructure, and nation-building initiatives.
- Provide funding to develop a national AI-enabled repository of planning bylaws, zoning regulations, and permitting processes to support acceleration of housing approvals and innovation across jurisdictions.
Learn more about each recommendation in the full copy of our pre-budget submission below: