If you ask any builder in Ontario what’s slowing down housing delivery, you’ll likely hear the same thing: red tape.
The truth is, we have the technology, materials, and expertise to build smarter, greener, and faster, but the systems designed to regulate those advances haven’t kept up.
That’s the paradox in Canadian housing today: the future of homebuilding is here, but bureaucracy keeps it stuck in the past.
Innovation is ready. The system isn’t.
Across the industry, builders are exploring methods like prefabrication (or factory-built), mass timber, and net-zero-ready construction. These innovations could dramatically speed up housing delivery, improve sustainability, and help meet government targets for affordability and climate resilience.
Yet even when builders want to adopt these solutions, the approval process itself becomes the bottleneck. Every new material or design system must move through multiple layers of review, often interpreted differently across municipalities.
So while we’re told to “innovate,” the message is clear: do it within an outdated framework.
Prefabrication: A Missed Opportunity
Prefabrication—building homes in controlled factory environments before assembling them on-site—is already transforming housing in other parts of the world. It allows for greater precision, reduced waste, faster timelines, and fewer weather-related delays.
In Canada, it could be a powerful tool to address housing demand. Developers and builders here already have the skills, knowledge, and infrastructure to manufacture complete units or individual rooms to exact specifications and deliver them in mass quantities. These factory-built components could be used to assemble multi-unit low-rise buildings or townhomes more efficiently and at lower cost than traditional methods.
The challenge lies in the approval and permitting system, which is still structured around conventional, site-built construction. Even when factory-built units meet or exceed quality and safety standards, each component must undergo multiple redundant inspections, dramatically slowing the process.
It’s a bit like trying to move electric vehicles through a system built for horse-drawn carriages: the technology and capability exist, but the system hasn’t caught up. Until approval processes adapt, Canadian builders cannot fully leverage prefabrication to deliver high-quality, affordable housing at scale.
Red Tape vs. Responsible Innovation
Regulation exists for good reason: to ensure safety, accountability, and quality. But when the system cannot distinguish between innovation and risk, it ends up penalizing progress.
As a builder, I see both sides—the need for oversight and the need for evolution. What we need is collaboration between policymakers, builders, and regulators to modernize approvals for proven, high-performance methods.
Innovation shouldn’t mean cutting corners. It should mean building better, faster, cleaner, and safer.
The Human Cost of Delay
When we talk about approvals and red tape, it can sound like a purely bureaucratic problem. But the consequences are deeply human.
Every delay in getting homes built translates into rising costs, shrinking supply, and affordability pressures that affect real families. Young buyers get priced out, rental markets tighten, and sustainable building companies are forced to shelve ideas that could have made a difference.
There’s also a cost on the labour side. Skilled tradespeople, such as carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and other professionals, are ready and eager to work, but delays leave them underutilized. Jobs go unfilled, expertise goes untapped, and people who could be building quality homes sit idle while the system drags behind.
We can’t afford to let innovation gather dust while people wait for homes. Every day counts: for families, for communities, and for the people who have the skills to make a difference.
Building Smarter Homes, Faster
To move forward, we need a national framework that recognizes the legitimacy of modern building practices, such as factory-built and net-zero-ready construction.
That doesn’t mean removing oversight; it means standardizing it. Pre-approved designs, third-party certifications, and digital permitting could all align safety with speed.
If we want to solve the housing crisis, we cannot rely on yesterday’s processes to build tomorrow’s homes.
Building smarter
At Cardea Homes, we’re not interested in building faster just for the sake of it. We’re interested in building smarter and better.
Innovation, for us, is about elevating quality and well-being, not sacrificing them. Factory-built, high-performance design and sustainable materials are tools to create homes that are good for people and the planet.
But until the system catches up, those tools will remain underused.
As an industry and as a country, we need to reimagine how homes are approved, not to make it easier to build anything, but to make it possible to build the right things.
The housing crisis is not just a supply problem. It’s a systems problem.
If we want to meet our housing goals responsibly, we must rethink how we define “innovation” and create pathways that allow it to thrive.
Because innovation isn’t the challenge—the challenge is letting innovation happen.
—Paul