On September 14, 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney launched Build Canada Homes, a bold federal initiative aimed at increasing homebuilding across the country.

This program represents a significant step forward in addressing one of Canada’s most urgent needs: housing that is affordable, accessible, sustainable, and built at scale. For communities like ours, it promises some real change and is an opportunity to deepen our commitment to supplying the materials, expertise, and service that make housing possible.

What Build Canada Homes Means

Here are some of the key elements of the program:

  • Large-scale, affordable housing: The Agency will build supportive and transitional housing, serve low-income households, and partner with private developers to reach the middle class.

  • Modern methods of construction: There will be strong emphasis on factory-built, modular, mass timber and other more efficient, lower-carbon building methods.

  • Use of public lands: Federal lands will be leveraged to reduce costs and speed up development.

  • Buy Canadian policy: Prioritizing Canadian materials (like our steel from Bailey Metals…) so that investments not only build houses but strengthen our domestic industries and create good jobs.

  • Initial funding: The initiative begins with $13 billion in federal capital to get projects started, support large portfolio-scale housing, and derisk projects for private builders.

Why This Matters Locally (And Why We’re Excited!)

At its heart, this announcement aligns with what we at Hewson Brothers have believed and acted on for many years: that housing is essential infrastructure. It affects everything, where kids grow up, where people commute, the strength of small business, affordability, and community wellbeing.

Here’s what it means for our region and for us:

  • Faster, more affordable housing means more stable communities and more opportunity for people who are finding housing costs out of reach.

  • Emphasis on modern construction methods helps reduce costs, improves timelines, and lowers environmental impact, which benefits everyone.

  • Use of Canadian materials and domestic supply chains helps suppliers, transporters, trade workers, manufacturers, all parts of our local economy.

We are especially encouraged by federal policies that reduce red tape, support private sector collaboration, and invest in public lands. These help projects move from idea to reality more quickly, while keeping costs manageable.

Our Role: Supplying & Supporting

At Hewson Brothers, our mission has always gone beyond simply providing materials. We aim to:

  • Be a partner—offering advice, logistics, and solutions so builders can focus on construction and design, not supply-chain headaches.

  • Maintain high quality across a wide range of materials: framing, insulation, steel, finishing, acoustics, etc.

  • Support more sustainable building practices, including low-carbon materials, efficient design, and modular/factory-built components.

With Build Canada Homes opening the door to ambitious, large-scale housing programs, we’re ready to step up. Whether it’s helping source materials for builds, ensuring supply of Canadian steel, or facilitating faster delivery to construction sites, we want to be part of accelerating progress.

A Nod to Build Now Waterloo

While Build Canada Homes sets a nationwide framework, local efforts like Build Now Waterloo remind us what can happen when everything lines up – collaboration, urgency, innovation, courage. These projects help show what success looks like: getting homes built, people housed, community benefits realized. They complement national programs by demonstrating how policy and local will can work hand in hand.

Looking Forward

The unveiling of Build Canada Homes is more than a policy move; it’s an invitation. An invitation to builders, suppliers, municipalities, Indigenous communities, and advocates to work together, to think boldly, and to deliver results.

For Hewson Brothers, the message is clear: the future is busy, and the future needs us. We’re excited to continue doing our part — supplying materials, offering support, helping with solutions — so that together we can build more housing, faster, affordably, and sustainably.

Because housing isn’t just about structures—it’s about dignity, shelter, security, and the opportunity for people to thrive. And we’re proud to be part of that work.