Canada isn’t short on builders, yet it’s building less than ever. Despite record numbers of workers and billions in public spending, housing output per worker hasn’t kept pace. Home prices may be softening, but affordability remains out of reach and construction backlogs keep growing.

A new Macdonald-Laurier Institute study, Measuring Productivity in Canada’s Residential Construction Sector, examines an overlooked aspect of the affordability and supply issue: construction sector productivity. The findings raise hard questions about whether government housing targets are even possible under the current system, and what needs to change to make building faster, smarter, and more affordable.

The panel explored why total construction times and productivity have stalled and how better policy, smarter regulation, and modern building methods can help break through the bottlenecks. If Canada wants to solve its housing crisis, it must first fix how it builds – and that starts with productivity.