B.C.’s catalogue of housing designs is here. Where is Ottawa’s?

The reveal of a new catalogue of pre-approved housing designs in British Columbia this week is raising questions about when a promised federal counterpart will be available.

And as the cost of living and unemployment rates continue to bite, advocates say the time is now to speed up the federal promise and do whatever can be done to build more homes, quickly — and try to make it easier to build pre-fabricated homes.

“In order to have a factory producing housing, you need a guarantee of a certain number of orders. And that’s very hard to do if you’re working with several different jurisdictions, all of whom have different rules as to what’s allowed and what isn’t,” said Carolyn Whitzman, senior housing researcher for University of Toronto’s School of Cities.

Pre-fabricated housing or prefab construction is a method of building where the bulk of the construction happens off-site, often in a facility like a factory.

Either a fully-constructed modular home or parts of a house are then shipped off to the location, where it is assembled and connected to utilities.

The potential has been a growing topic of conversation as provinces and the federal government eye ways to standardize and accelerate home building.

Having standardized designs means developers can cut through the red tape and start building quickly.

Whitzman said this is demonstrated by the city of Kelowna, B.C., which introduced standardized designs in 2022, well before the rest of the province.

“Kelowna can turn around approvals for these pre-approved designs in ten days. Whereas in, say, the GTA (Greater Toronto Area), approval for an infill design could easily take 18 months,” she said.

Whitzman said a federal catalogue is the need of the hour.

“Whichever level of