How Build Canada Homes can advance the Retrofit Mission

The federal government closed 2025 with the introduction of the Build Canada Homes Investment Policy Framework. Broadly, the framework leans into scaling up construction and compressing costs to address what Canadians have been asking for: more housing, affordable living and improved climate resilience. 

Retrofits are key to this endeavour. Existing buildings represent the majority of Canada’s housing stock, and the federal government can support on-the-ground teams delivering the retrofits these buildings need. 

While new construction is the primary focus of the Build Canada Homes framework, it also plans to “invest in preserving and, where appropriate, extending the life of existing rental housing through repairs and retrofits” via the Canada Rental Protection Fund. This is a clear and much-needed opening for existing affordable housing retrofit projects. 

As the federal government ramps up support for affordable housing through Build Canada Homes, retrofits can provide long-term stability to the rapidly expanding housing market. Retrofit accelerators across the country are already demonstrating the potential benefits, and coordinated leadership can advance a retrofit mission that contributes to Build Canada Homes’ success.

Retrofits help Build Canada Homes

Like much of Canada’s decades-old infrastructure, the majority of our homes were built before the turn of the century and are no longer resilient enough for changing climate threats. We are at a pivotal lifecycle point: repair or replace. We certainly cannot afford to replace all the housing. The federal government must expand its focus on existing buildings to provide Canadians with affordable and climate-resilient housing. 

The Build Canada Homes framework recognizes this need by prioritizing energy efficiency and specifying that repairs and retrofits will “support climate resilience and emissions reduction goals.”

Retrofit accelerators demonstrate how this can be done. These teams are already working with households and stakeholders from across the homebuilding industry to plan and deliver much-needed housing upgrades. Build Canada Homes can expand upon this momentum by directing its funding to scaling up these early partnerships and pipelines so that they can deliver construction and retrofits across the country.

To achieve this, the government can apply a similar market “modernizing” approach to existing buildings as it does to new ones. Build Canada Homes is supporting the homebuilding industry by driving demand for modern methods of construction, described as “innovative home building methods and technologies that can reduce cost, time, and labour intensity per housing unit delivered, if done at scale.” The government should ensure that the framework is flexible and can drive this demand toward retrofits as well. 

Expanding retrofit support can ensure the existing building stock benefits from the framework’s economic development opportunities, including its focus on modern construction methods, domestic resources, and workforce growth and diversification. The framework’s inclusion of multisector partnerships, strategies to attract private capital, and explicit ties to federal programs and policies — like the Housing Design Catalogue and the Affordable Housing Fund — can further advance this goal.

Boots on the ground with shovels ready

While the framework recognizes the importance of preserving and upgrading existing buildings, it fails to address a glaring implementation gap: Who is meant to coordinate demand and supply in the modernization of construction methods? 

Perhaps by happy accident, two federally funded programs have teams working on the ground across the country prepared to mobilize “shovel-ready” affordable housing retrofit projects and the supply-side actors and technology to make them happen. Recipients of the Deep Retrofit Accelerator Initiative and the Greener Neighbourhoods Pilot Program have been helping building owners prepare retrofit plans, and thousands of buildings are ready for financing and implementation.

These types of boots-on-the-ground teams are the missing link that could help the Build Canada Homes framework achieve affordable, resilient, and low-carbon new and existing housing for all Canadians. They crowd in knowledge, set up collaborative infrastructure, and directly and indirectly stimulate innovation to work on transformative systemic challenges. They are channels for learning through experimentation and innovating based on feedback from the coordinated ecosystem they engage with. Industry thrives on stability, and market development teams embedded in regions throughout Canada can help navigate the ever-changing political and economic waters, especially in times of international trade wars and austerity.

The framework also promises to establish “effective, tailored financing options,” but it does not provide details or acknowledge major gaps that closure of government programs like the successful Greener Homes Loan has left. 

Ottawa could pursue a mix of policies to fill this gap, such as launching a retrofit mission backed by the Canadian Infrastructure Bank with an expanded mandate or creating a green bank.

Preserve and Build Canada Homes with a Retrofit Mission

Efficiency Canada and colleagues in the sector have long called for the Government of Canada to play a critical role in coordinating housing and affordability solutions with subnational governments. It should also leverage the huge economic development opportunities our construction and manufacturing industries offer, such as by launching a Retrofit Mission.

As a collective of many industries, we need to press the federal government to recognize that a policy combining new and existing housing has transformative potential. This approach provides a larger and longer-term market for modernized construction technologies, could prevent the loss of existing housing units and can more rapidly expand the number of housing units without the threat of replacing the homes we already live in.

Mission-oriented policy is about choosing a transformative goal that will spur multiple benefits and interactions across sectors. The Retrofit Mission can complement and reinforce the Build Canada Homes mission. It’s time to show what coordinated leadership can unlock by crowding in local ambition and innovation.

In the meantime, the Build Canada Homes portal is open. Affordable housing retrofit projects that can begin construction within 12 months could be eligible. This is a rallying call to retrofit accelerators, market development teams and concierges to show their value and get projects into the funding pipeline. Efficiency Canada wants to amplify these stories and showcase the retrofit pipeline underway. We invite applicants to send their submitted proposals — including a summary, region, partners, timeline and what makes it eligible.