Conversations that Matter. Careers that Matter - Stu McNish, Vancouver Sun May 31, 2025

Last week I did an interview with Stu McNish who produces Conversations that Matter as well as Conversations Live, regarding the federal governments new housing policies and the selection of Gregor Robertson as the new housing minister. Yesterday the interview went live in the Vancouver Sun. Another interview I taped with Stu discussing my career as an architect, planner, developer, and failed politician, accompanied the main interview.

You can find the two interviews here. and

For those of you, which is likely all of you, who do not wish to take the time to watch these interviews, the following are a few highlights.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, of whom I am a fan, is promising to double the number of new homes built across Canada in the next year or two. Based on my 50+ years experience in housing, including 10 years at CMHC, I believe this is completely unrealistic.

Had the prime ministers announced that next year Canada would increase the number of new homes by 10%, and 20% in two years, and 30% in three years, etc I would have thought this was possible. But given that Canada has never built as many homes per capita since 1972 when I was at CMHC, we can’t double the number of homes

For one thing we do not have the labour force. Carney has suggested we can address this by building homes in a factory. As my friends and family well know, I've been a proponent of factory-built housing since1970 when I journeyed across the United States studying factory construction on a CMHC Travelling Scholarship.

Subsequently, I have often predicted in my year-end Vancouver Sun outlook columns that the following year would be the year factory production would become popular. Until this year, I've been consistently wrong!

During my interview I mentioned that I recently attended a manufactured housing conference in Penticton where I visited the Moduline factory . Although it has capacity for 800 homes a year, it is currently producing only 200 homes a year due to a lack of demand, and shortage of available workers.

These are just two of the reasons why Canada will not be building 500,000 homes a year soon, with or without factory-built housing. (While I didn’t mention it in the interview, shortly after the conference, the nearby SRI factory closed down.)

That said some of the federal promises are both realistic and appropriate. It makes sense to eliminate the GST for first time buyers on homes under $1,000,000, (the government recently amended this promise to include partial GST rebates on homes up to $1.5 million.)

It also makes sense to bring back the Multiple Unit Residential Program (MURB) which in the late 1970s and early 1980s offered tax incentives to investors in new rental housing projects.

This would be helpful since so many recent provincial, federal and municipal programs including the ban on foreign buyers, the Empty Home and Speculation and Vacancy Taxes, the limitations on short-term rentals, and anti-flipping taxes, etc. have had the unintended consequence of essentially killing the investor market and new housing developments. What wasn’t appreciated is that investors were essential to allow developers to achieve the required number of presales to finance these new condominium projects, which offered both ownership housing, but also new rental housing stock.

Now, as for Gregor Robertson, if you want to know if I thought he was a good choice, you’ll have to watch the end of the video!

In the career video I am asked whether I expected to be involved in the wide range of activities that I have undertaken over the years.  I admited that I did not, although I always wanted and expected to become a property developer since I was a young boy who played with Bayko. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayko  

I mention that when I was with CMHC back in the 70s then president Bill Teron told my colleagues that one day I would be a developer in Vancouver!

In the interview I also discuss why I ran for City Council in 2008 and two things to which I attribute some success. Reading Edward deBono and keeping a personal journal!