I managed to take in some of the inaugural National Housing Day Summit in Halifax on Monday 24 Nov.
From Barriers to Blueprints was presented by a trio of provincial partners: Canadian Home Builders Association-NS (CHBA-NS) with Habitat for Humanity Nova Scotia and the Nova Scotia Association of REALTORS® (NSAR).
The goal for the day: “to bring together government representatives, industry leaders, developers, builders, renovators, and housing advocates to share insights, spark collaboration, and explore real, actionable solutions to the most pressing housing issues across our province.”
The sessions explored:
- Breaking down interprovincial trade barriers
- Advancing innovative and affordable housing models
- Identifying actionable strategies to improve access to attainable housing
- Strengthening collaboration between industry and government
It was a very full day, and while I missed the session by CHBA National’s CEO, Kevin Lee, I did get the gist of it second hand through the sidebar conversations I had:
- Federal housing policy and how it impacts the industry.
- Need to eliminate regulatory red tape and streamline approval processes to support faster home construction.
- Systemic trade barriers that affect affordability and supply.
- Innovation and improved efficiency in construction methods can help improve affordability across the country
(CTV coverage of the event here.)
The Big Picture Challenges Facing Our Industry
The most interesting portions of pretty near every conference or speaking event, for me, are the panel discussions and the follow up Q&A sessions. This one did not disappoint.
A wide-ranging panel responded to the question prompts given by CHBA-NS Executive Director, Crystal Ingram: Suzanne Gravel (NSAR), Pedro Barata (Habitat for Humanity), Vicki Elliot-Lopez (NS Dept of Growth & Development) , Alex Lawson (Political Intelligence), and Justin Johnston (CHBA-NS).
Highlights for me echo a lot of what we discuss internally here at Blue House Energy: how to get more people into the home construction and renovation trades. What are the blockers, what are the stepping stones, where are we making progress. BHE is just a wee cog in this big, sprawling industry, but maintaining a clear, focussed view of the larger picture is critical to us as we map our way forward.
We want to make sure that we are offering, providing, and delivering online training to Canadians and the home building/renovation industry in the most accessible and useful ways possible.
It was good to hear that our internal conversations echo many of the big picture issues, while at the same time, the bigger picture got clearer for our future direction!
Sooooo many challenges to face.
Aging workforce, fewer work-ready tradespeople joining the workforce, competition from other trades for new people, low productivity, lack of exposure and engagement for young people, educational bias towards university vs trades college, red tape, affordability…
The red tape and affordability elements are overlapping and overwhelming. Political promises and political will can (and do) devastate the market. For example, the First Time Home Buyers GST/HST Rebate (FTHB).
A Cautionary Tale of Good Intentions
The FTHB rebate will remove the GST (or the federal part of the HST) on new homes at or under $1 million, and lower it on homes between $1 million and $1.5 million for all first-time home buyers. (FYI: It’s available if the agreement of purchase and sale for the home is entered into with the builder on or after May 27, 2025 and before 2031.)
The first time the federal government mentioned cutting the GST on houses under $1million was in the election campaign back in March. Then again with the announcement of the Build Canada Homes (BCH). Then again when the legislation was tabled. It was passed in May 2025, but is not yet enacted (Nov 2025), as it is waiting on royal assent. Which may or may not come in this legislative sitting. Find out the current status here.
So what does this mean in in the day-to-day?
Prospective home buyers who will qualify can’t access the rebate. Builders can’t offer buyers a credit for the new rebate, which would lowering the purchase price. A lower purchase price can be crucial for mortgage qualification in high ticket, big markets like Vancouver or Toronto.
If you don’t think that this has stalled home buyer plans to purchase, you need to shake your head clear of the drywall dust and read the news - housing starts have tanked. There are several reasons that have combined to cause the drop, but rest assured the decision to hold off on buying/building until that tax credit is in effect is one of them.
For the first time in decades, builders who have consistently been scheduling project starts 3 to 6 months (and more) in advance are twiddling their thumbs. They’re now waiting hopefully for the surge. But market slow downs lead to layoffs and closures for thousands of small businesses riding the rails of profitability. This further bruises this big, crucial industry when those laid-off don’t come back because of the volatility.
The Workforce Challenge: Reaching Microbusinesses
And that brings the focus back onto the workforce elements.
While other industries can lean on medium and large businesses to carry out change and training/licensing requirements, home construction and renovation in Canada has very few medium and large firms. Mostly it’s one of two microbusiness models:
- One person wearing several hats and running a crew or two
- One person taking on the role of project manager, relying on subcontractors instead of in-house crews.
Both of these models are tough to reach into to add any form of training, mentoring, upskilling, or participation in workforce development or coop student programs. And very few builders have any formal (or informal) training on how to mentor or teach. Or formal training in business management. Or time for any of it.
Business model aside, there are too few seats in formal learning institutions to boost the workforce numbers we need. That’s always been the case, but now, with attrition, it’s worse, because of the number of retiring mentors. Red Seal carpenters make up a small proportion of our workforce, meaning direct entry - that first sweeper-upper job that leads to labourer that leads to framer that leads to crew chief - is the typical way that folks fall into the trades.
These are not news items.
They are certainly worth reiterating.
Work-Ready Trades : What Does That Actually Mean?
‘Work-ready trades’ was one of the terms I heard a lot, referring in part to immigration missions to bring in skilled home construction workers from other parts of the world. These workers may be skilled, but they don’t know cold climate housing. Meaning there’s a cycle of learning, and that’s not taking place in colleges, it’s taking place on site (if at all). The burden is on the employer, and as noted, the majority of Canadian home builders don’t have the capacity or funding to take on that extra load.
‘Work-ready trades’ also applies to the small volume of new tradespeople coming out of Canadian high schools, colleges, technical institutes, and CÉGEPs, as well as universities. It matters what’s being taught, how it’s taught, and by whom. One of the biggest beefs I hear from builders who hire fresh-out-of-school is this: please please please teach them basic math and how to use a tape measure and a speed square. That’s not ‘work-ready’!
Home building is also in direct competition with many other industries where medium and large companies with HR support can scoop up both newcomers and recent grads.
So we’re back to direct entry.
The folks who don’t go to school, who get trained (for worse/for better) on the job, on the fly, maybe through manufacturer’s workshops. The bulk of the on-site workforce has no formal education past high school. They’re not going to leave a decent paying job to go back to school.
Let’s look at some numbers. Carpentry is a non-compulsory trade, meaning a worker does not legally need a Red Seal certification to work in the field.
There’s no record of how many active Red Seal carpenters there are. We know that there are somewhere around 2 million Red Seal tradespeople in the workforce, but that’s spread across 54 trades. And ‘carpenter’ does not equal home builder.
Canadian Apprenticeship Forum (CAF-FCA) notes that there are currently just under 45,000 registered apprentices or trade qualifiers for carpentry in Canada. There are more than 600,000 people working in the field (with 1.5 million in the industry). Registered carpentry apprentices make up less than 1% of the industry that relies on carpenters.
We’re not populating the bulk of our workforce from apprenticeship programs, and we’re not getting enough people coming into the industry as we need by continuing to pull from the ‘traditional’ pool of industry entrants.
Getting Them Interested Early
We need to expand the pool of people coming in and, at the same time, establish ways to give them some fundamental skills and knowledge. Those skills like how to use math and basic tools like a tape measure and a speed square. Absolute fundamentals. How to calculate area, volume, how to square a corner. How to read a set of plans. These are the key things on employers’ wish lists.
How do we do this? We get ‘em early. Grade 8, according to Laura King, Operations Manager at Skills Canada Nova Scotia, is the time to engage.
That was one of the themes of the panel discussion, and Laura and I went on to a deep dive conversation.
Engage and expose a wider group of young people to the world of making things. I can guarantee the interest will far exceed schools’ capacity to deliver. It already does: some schools offer trades programs, others don’t.
In my kid’s former high school, there are 280-300 students enrolled in grade 10 every year. That’s the first year they can apply for the Construction Trades program. The school has a dedicated workshop building where the students learn skills by building a 4-room ‘motel’. There are two cohorts/year of 16 students, so 32 of nearly 300 students, 10-11% of the school population, have a chance to get into construction trades.
That ratio is on par with the ratio of construction trades jobs in the workforce. But only 5 of 17 senior high school programs have construction trades options, so that means Halifax is producing somewhere around 1/3 of the kids-with-skills than the workforce needs. In my kid’s year, there were many more applicants to the Construction Trades program than seats, and we knew several very disappointed kids.
There was lots of talk about the need to give more kids exposure to the trades. I agree with that (wholeheartedly!), AND we need to build capacity. To do that, we need to expand who can do co-op semesters, how credits can be earned in the field, and create more opportunities for real-time, real-world participation in building projects.
How can we do that?
Give them the experience of the mental challenges of building, the reason why Pythagoras theorem is something that all carpenters use, the 3-d puzzle solving, the project management/scheduling.
Give them the experience of hammering, lifting a wall, completing a project, working as a team. As panel member Alex Watson from Political Intelligence said: we used to be a nation of makers. Now we can’t find enough people to make the things we need. Academics-biased education has taken it’s toll over the past few generations.
We need to make trades a first-choice career path.
Post high school, or maybe even in high school, how about a path that is built on Germany’s dual vocation school model? In this model, trainees split their time between vocational school and a company workplace, creating a balanced approach to skill development.
The structure is flexible: students might attend school one or two days per week, or participate in "block" classes like our apprentices do. At school, they focus on theoretical and general subjects, while their time at the company provides hands-on training directly relevant to their chosen profession.
Building Real Skills: The Tiny House Construction Program
I’m Chair of the Housing Construction Council of Nova Scotia, and our organization has, over the past 18 months, created an amazing program for workforce development that teaches underemployed folks the fundamentals of home building. It’s called the Tiny House Construction program. This is what I’m talking about: hands on, supervised instruction, worth high school credits or banked hours towards apprenticeship blocks. We’re proud to say that 80% of graduates to date are employed after the program.
Bonus points: every cohort creates at least one livable house that is handed over to a community organization versus a pretend 4-room motel that gets dismantled at the end of the program. That’s what happens to the end-product of the high school construction trades students. Because the schools don’t have funding for materials, they have to re-use the ones they’ve got. I don’t know anyone (outside theatre kids) who are happy about making pretend.
Work-ready graduates in 18 weeks. Entry level, yes. Willing and able bodies, yes. People with a solid grounding in basic skills and understanding of how to take a house from sticks to finishes. An employer’s dream.
Looking Ahead to 2026: Your Success Stories Wanted
To build capacity, we need to build exposure and we need to expand opportunities for young people to get hammers in their hands.
What’s going on in your neck of the woods to expand capacity, innovate on education, invite under-represented groups to the table, get people excited about home construction as a first-choice career path?
Let me know! I want to spend 2026 writing blog articles and hosting podcast episodes that showcase regional success stories.
