Are Federal Housing-Supply Programs Getting More Homes Built in the Greater Toronto Area?

1Key Findings

• Canada started 259,028 homes in 2025, up 5.6% and the fifth-highest year on record. The gain came from Calgary, Edmonton, Montréal and Ottawa; Toronto fell 31% [3].
• In 2026 national starts are running 4% below 2025 year-to-date. Toronto CMA starts are down 14%, to 17,397 through September, and Hamilton CMA starts are down 39% [2].
• CMHC estimates Toronto needs to raise annual starts by at least 50% over the next decade to restore 2019 affordability, and that the shortfall is increasingly concentrated in ownership housing [1].
• Toronto CMA rental apartment starts rose 82% in the first half of 2026 and exceeded condominium starts for the first time since 1994. CMHC credits government financing programs, municipal incentives and condo-to-rental conversions [1].
• The GTHA started 9,821 purpose-built rentals in 2025, the most since the 1970s [10]. In the first half of 2026 it started 6,291 more, up 50% year over year [11]. Even so, condo units under construction fell 64% from their Q2-2023 peak, and total apartment units under construction fell 21% year over year [11].
• GTA new-home sales in 2025 were 5,314, the lowest in the 45 years the data has been collected. Condominium sales were 89% below the 10-year average [14].
• Toronto issued permits for 22,849 net new homes in 2024, 37.5% of its three-year Housing Accelerator Fund target, in the first year [5]. The PBO nonetheless found Toronto CMA starts fell sharply while permits barely moved. It attributes the decline to economic conditions, not to the program [4].
• The PBO estimates the enhanced GST rental rebate will cost $5.8 billion from 2023-24 to 2028-29. $2.3 billion of that goes to units that would have qualified anyway, and the PBO says the number of units built solely because of the rebate cannot be projected [6].
• The PBO expects Build Canada Homes to add about 26,000 units nationally over five years, a 2.1% increase in completions. Over the same period, total federal planned housing-program spending falls 56%, from $9.8 billion in 2025-26 to $4.3 billion in 2028-29 [7].
• The August 2026 Canada–Toronto partnership commits more than $310 million from Build Canada Homes and more than $1.8 billion in Apartment Construction Loan Program (ACLP) financing to 18 projects of more than 5,600 rental homes. Construction is expected to begin on more than 4,500 of those homes before the end of 2026 [8].
• Ontario's HST removal on new homes (April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027) lifted GTHA new-condo sales 52% in Q2-2026, to 702 units. Most of those sales were of completed inventory. Pre-construction sales, the kind that lead to new starts, fell 80%, to 50 units [12][15].

2Details

1. What the programs are, what they cost, and what they promise

Five federal or federally co-funded measures matter for GTA supply. They work through different channels, which is why their effects differ.

Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF). The HAF pays municipalities to change their rules, not to build. According to the PBO's July 2025 review, it is allocated $4.44 billion over five years. CMHC has committed $4.37 billion of that to 230 agreements with sub-national governments, whose aggregate target is 112,000 more housing units by 2028 than would otherwise have been built [4]. The target was originally 100,000 new homes by 2024-25 [4]. Recipients' own estimates add up to 119,685 incremental units over three years and 833,126 over ten years [4]. Spending has been slow: of the $599 million advanced to participating jurisdictions for their first year, $93 million (16%) had been spent by the end of that year [4].

Toronto's agreement, signed with CMHC on December 20, 2023, is worth $471.1 million [5]. It commits the city to eight initiatives with 35 milestones, and to 60,980 net new permitted homes between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2026 [5]. The money comes in four instalments of $117.78 million. The last is contingent on reaching the 60,980 total and four sub-targets: multi-unit housing near rapid transit, missing-middle housing, other multi-unit housing, and affordable homes [5]. The city's application said its HAF measures would produce about 11,780 net new permitted homes over three years above what would otherwise happen [5]. That 11,780 is the incremental claim; the remaining ~49,000 permitted homes in the target were expected regardless. The unit of measurement is the building permit, net of demolitions and conversions, not the housing start or the completion [5].

Enhanced GST rental rebate. Announced September 14, 2023 and legislated December 15, 2023 in Bill C-56, it removes all GST on new purpose-built rental units of any value. Before the change, units worth under $450,000 got a rebate of up to 36% of GST paid [6]. To qualify, construction must begin between September 14, 2023 and December 31, 2030 and be substantially complete by December 31, 2035, in buildings with at least four units and 90% long-term rentals [6]. The PBO estimates foregone revenue of $5.8 billion from 2023-24 to 2028-29. $2.3 billion of it goes to units that would have received a rebate without the enhancement, and $3.5 billion to newly eligible units [6]. Ontario is the largest contributor to the cost of newly eligible units, along with British Columbia, because high unit values meant few Ontario rentals qualified before [6]. The PBO's costing assumes the same number of units would be built with or without the enhancement. It states plainly that "it would be impossible to project how many units would be constructed solely due to the federal rebate enhancement." [6] Urbanation, in a study for a landlord association, describes the federal rebate and the Ontario rebate together as the "full removal of the HST on new rental construction" [13].

Apartment Construction Loan Program (ACLP). CMHC offers low-cost loans from $1,000,000 up to 100% of the cost of a project's residential component, covering construction through to stabilized operations, for standard rental, seniors and student housing [9]. Budget 2024 earmarked at least $100 million for apartments above shops and at least $500 million for prefabricated or innovative construction [9]. CMHC's program page does not state the program's total lending envelope [9]. The Urbanation–FRPO study calls it "CMHC's $55 billion Apartment Construction Loan Program" [13]; I could not verify that figure against a CMHC or Finance Canada source in this pass.

Build Canada Homes (BCH). The new federal agency builds directly, supports construction by others, and funds acquisitions. The PBO's December 2025 report puts its planned spending at $7.3 billion over 2025-26 to 2029-30, of which $6.7 billion is new; including loans and asset development, cash expenditures are $13.0 billion [7]. The $7.3 billion breaks down as $625 million for the Canada Rental Protection Fund (acquisitions, which add no units), $1 billion for transitional and supportive housing, and $5.4 billion in grants, contributions and loan concessions [7]. For its own developments, BCH plans 60% market-rent units, 20% at rents affordable to a median-income household and 20% at somewhat deeper affordability [7].

The 2026 Canada–Ontario ownership package. Announced March 30, 2026, it removes the full 13% HST for eligible buyers of new homes worth up to $1 million, a maximum of $130,000. The rebate stays at that maximum between $1 million and $1.5 million and falls to $24,000 for homes worth $1.85 million or more [15]. It applies from April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027 [15]. Ontario also committed to halving development charges for three years. Ottawa is putting $4.4 billion over 10 years through a new Build Communities Strong Fund into the infrastructure those charges used to pay for, and Ontario is matching it, for $8.8 billion in total [15]. Under that framework, Toronto signed a Development Charge Reduction Program agreement in June 2026 worth up to $1.5 billion. In exchange, the city cuts development charges by 60% for houses, semis and apartments with two or more bedrooms, and by 40% for studios and one-bedrooms, for at least three years [16]. Toronto estimates the cuts and related infrastructure will unlock more than 44,000 units [16]. That is the city's own projection, not an independent estimate.

What the governments claim. Prime Minister Carney said the HST measure would "catalyze an additional 8,000 housing starts in Ontario next year" [15]. BILD's leadership predicted the package could roughly double the starts the region is currently seeing [15]. Neither claim came with a published method. The federal government's stated goal is to double the pace of housing construction over the next decade, but the PBO observed in December 2025 that "the Government has not yet set out any plan to achieve this goal." [7]

2. What happened to construction nationally, 2024–2026

National starts held up while Toronto's collapsed. CMHC reported 259,028 starts for all areas in 2025, up 5.6% from 245,367 in 2024 and the fifth-highest annual total on record [3]. In centres of 10,000 or more people the figure was 241,171, up 6% [3]. CMHC attributed the gains to a second consecutive year of record rental starts, which made up just over half of all urban starts [3]. The six largest CMAs together rose 3.9%. Calgary and Edmonton set records, Montréal rose 58% and Ottawa–Gatineau 12%, offsetting a 31% drop in Toronto and a 3% drop in Vancouver [3].

CMHC's chief economist, Mathieu Laberge, said momentum peaked in spring and summer 2025, and that economic uncertainty and "the diminished viability of large residential towers encouraged a shift towards smaller-scale projects" [3]. That matters for Toronto, whose new supply has depended on high-rise condominiums more than any other Canadian market.

The slowdown continued into 2026. Through September, actual starts in centres of 10,000+ totalled 170,964, down 4% from the same period of 2025 [2]. The six-month trend was 250,411 units SAAR, and the September SAAR was 248,896 [2]. CMHC's deputy chief economist, Aled ab Iorwerth, said that of the four most populous provinces, only Quebec had modest gains in 2026, and that all seven major centres in the Housing Supply Report were behind their 2025 pace [2]. Ontario's year-to-date starts fell 5% (46,111 to 43,994) and Quebec's rose 3% [2].

CMHC's Fall 2026 Housing Supply Report sets this against need. Canada needs roughly 417,000 to 469,000 starts a year to restore 2019 affordability by 2036, against a business-as-usual forecast of 231,000, which leaves a gap of 187,000 to 238,000 homes a year [1]. CMHC says Canada still needs roughly twice as much construction as currently projected [1].

3. What happened in the GTA: an ownership collapse partly offset by rentals

Geography. "GTA" means different areas in different datasets. CMHC's Toronto CMA excludes the Oshawa CMA (eastern Durham) and the Hamilton CMA, which CMHC reports separately [2][3]. Urbanation reports for the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA), which includes Hamilton [10][11]. BILD and Altus report for the GTA, with Simcoe County separately [14]. Given your decision to cover the GTA rather than Hamilton alone, this report uses CMHC's Toronto CMA as the core series and adds Oshawa and Hamilton where CMHC breaks them out. Because the geographies differ, figures across sources do not add up exactly.

Starts. Toronto CMA starts fell from 37,718 in 2024 to 26,087 in 2025 (−31%). Single-detached starts fell from 4,723 to 3,257 and all other types from 32,995 to 22,830 [3]. In January–September 2026 the CMA recorded 17,397 starts against 20,129 a year earlier (−14%). Single-detached starts fell 25% and other types 12% [2]. September 2026 alone was 1,440, down 61% from 3,678 in September 2025 [2]. The Toronto six-month trend stood at 24,837 SAAR in September 2026 [2]. The Oshawa CMA fell 36% in 2025, from 1,591 to 1,014, and another 27% year-to-date in 2026 [2][3]. The Hamilton CMA moved the other way in 2025, up 20% from 2,627 to 3,146, but its 2026 year-to-date starts are down 39%, at 1,253 against 2,065 [2][3].

On a per-person basis, CMHC reports Toronto starts per 10,000 population of 37 in the first half of 2023, 31 in 2024, 18 in 2025 and 19 in 2026, against 61 in Calgary and 51 in Edmonton in the first half of 2026 [1]. CMHC says Toronto's population-adjusted starts in the first half of 2026 were the lowest since 1996, excluding 2025 [1].

Tenure. CMHC's four-quarter moving sums for the Toronto CMA show the shift [1]:

Rental starts roughly doubled between the year to Q2 2025 and the year to Q2 2026, and now make up about 45% of the CMA's starts by my calculation. Condo starts fell by about 74% from the 2023 peak and freehold starts by about 39%. Total starts in the latest four quarters are about 48% below the year to Q2 2023 (my calculations from CMHC's table). CMHC's own reading is: "the decline in condominium starts is not offset by the record high number of rental unit starts." [1] In the City of Toronto, only 156 condominium units were started in the first half of 2026, compared with an average of 7,000 a year over the previous decade [1]. Ground-oriented freehold starts are at record lows after more than two decades of decline [1].

The pipeline. CMHC reports that Toronto's inventory of permitted units awaiting construction has fallen 50% from its 2023 peak, and that condominium launches have largely stalled [1]. In September 2026, 19,526 approved units were awaiting a start in the Toronto CMA and 88,108 were under construction, down from 91,584 in August [2]. Urbanation's GTHA figures tell the same story. Condo units under construction fell to 38,252 in Q2-2026, down 39% in a year and 64% from the peak of 105,421 in Q2-2023. Total apartment units under construction fell 21% year over year, to 69,897 [11]. The combined pre-construction and under-construction condo pipeline fell to 48,710 units, 62% below about 127,000 in 2022. There were no new project launches for a second consecutive quarter, 11,653 units have been cancelled since the start of 2024, and condo construction starts in Q2 were 448 units [12].

Sales, the leading indicator. High-rise condos in the GTA are financed through pre-construction sales, so sales determine starts two to four years later. BILD, citing Altus Group, reported 5,314 GTA new-home sales in 2025: 3,247 single-family (63% below the 10-year average) and 2,067 condominium apartments (89% below) [14]. Altus called it the lowest year in the 45 years GTA new-home sales data have been collected [14]. Unsold new-home inventory was 20,849 units in December 2025, equal to 26 months of sales [14]. BILD is the builders' lobby and used the figures to call for removing HST on all new homes [14]. The figures themselves come from Altus, BILD's data provider, and are consistent with CMHC's starts series.

What CMHC says is driving it. CMHC attributes the condo collapse to "weak presales, poor investor demand and high resale supply" [1]. It credits the rental increase to support "from government financing programs, municipal incentives and the conversion of some proposed condominium projects to rental housing" [1]. CMHC still finds Toronto's supply gap narrowed in 2026, but only because lower prices improved affordability. It calls this a reflection of softer market conditions "rather than sustainable affordability improvements" and says Toronto needs between 21,000 and 26,000 more starts each year [1]. CMHC's own table on the same page gives Toronto's gap as 20,000 to 26,000, against a business-as-usual forecast of 42,000 and a requirement of 62,000 to 68,000 [1]; the text and the table differ by 1,000 at the low end. Inference: the business-as-usual forecast of 42,000 a year is far above the 26,087 actually started in 2025, so CMHC's baseline already assumes a substantial recovery. If starts stay near the current trend of about 25,000, the real gap will be larger than CMHC's published range.

4. Did the Housing Accelerator Fund work in Toronto?

The HAF is the one program with a target written in measurable units, so it can be checked most directly. Measured by its own metric, permits, Toronto is succeeding. Measured by starts, it is not.

Permits. The city reported 22,849 net new homes permitted in 2024, 37.5% of the three-year target in the first year. It also reported being on track for three of its four sub-targets, but only at 15% of the affordable-housing sub-target [5]. Of the 35 milestones, 21 were complete by January 2025, with seven more in progress and seven moved to 2025 [5]. The city reports cutting time to decision on Official Plan amendments, zoning amendments and site plans by 80% or more in 2024, with average decisions taking about four months for OPA/ZBA and about three months for site plan [5]. The PBO likewise lists Toronto among the cities that significantly exceeded their annualized permit targets, alongside Calgary and Edmonton. Ottawa and Mississauga issued fewer permits than their baseline projections [4].

Starts. The PBO compared CMHC permit and start data for October 2024 to April 2025 with the 2018–2023 seasonally adjusted average. Across all participating jurisdictions, permits were up 31% and starts up 5%. Non-participating jurisdictions saw permits down 15% and starts down 28% [4]. But the PBO found the aggregate was driven by the Province of Quebec (+4,666), the Calgary CMA (+14,421) and the Edmonton CMA (+7,708). These were offset by the Toronto CMA (−18,219) and other Ontario CMAs (−4,002), with all figures expressed by the PBO as units started per month [4]. Toronto's permits, by contrast, were down only 148 units per month, which led the PBO to conclude that the city's "decline in starts appears to be driven by economic conditions" [4]. The PBO also cautioned that the gains in Quebec, Calgary and Edmonton likely reflect rezoning that was already well underway, or already legislated, before those HAF agreements were signed [4]. In other words, the program's best-looking results may not be the program's doing.

Inference: Toronto shows how the HAF's design can fail in a downturn. The program pays for permits and process reform, which the city controls. Whether a permitted project starts depends on presales, financing and interest rates, which the city does not control. The steep fall in Toronto's permitted-but-unstarted inventory [1] does not contradict this. It shows that projects permitted during the 2021–2023 boom were either built or abandoned, while new permits did not turn into starts at the old rate. The HAF can make approvals faster and cheaper, which removes one barrier, but it has no lever on the presale market.

What remains unknown. Toronto's three-year permit window closes December 31, 2026, and its final instalment depends on the full target [5]. No published source reviewed here reports Toronto's 2025 permit count, and CMHC's public HAF progress data could not be retrieved in this pass. HAF funding is scheduled to expire, and the PBO lists it among the programs whose expiry reduces CMHC spending [7].

5. The rental programs: where federal policy plausibly worked

The strongest case for federal programs in the GTA is purpose-built rental. Several independent measures agree that rental construction rose sharply in 2025–2026 while every other segment fell.

The numbers. Urbanation counted 9,821 purpose-built rental starts in the GTHA in 2025, up 42% from 6,908 in 2024 and the highest annual total since the 1970s. At year-end 27,815 rental units were under construction, up 77% over five years [10]. In the first half of 2026 another 6,291 rental units started, up 50% year over year and the highest first-half total in decades. By Q2-2026, 31,645 rental units in 102 projects were under construction across the GTHA [11]. Province-wide, the Urbanation–FRPO study reports Ontario purpose-built rental starts rose 37% in 2025 to 24,298, and reached 32,147 in the twelve months ending June 2026 [13]. CMHC's Toronto CMA series shows rental starts up 82% in the first half of 2026, and rental starts above condominium starts for the first time since 1994 [1].

Attribution. CMHC names government financing programs and municipal incentives as supports, alongside condo-to-rental conversions [1]. In its national commentary it says that "Government financing programs, lower or deferred development charges, and zoning reforms are improving the financial viability of some projects, particularly in purpose-built rental housing." [1] The Urbanation–FRPO study attributes Ontario's rental starts to the full HST removal on new rental construction, the ACLP, development-charge relief and the rent-control exemption for new supply [13]. The City of Toronto added its own incentives: an indefinite deferral of development charges and a 15% property-tax reduction for purpose-built rentals with at least 20% affordable units. The city expects this stream to move 7,156 net new rental homes, including 1,047 affordable, into construction by the end of 2026 [5].

How strong is that attribution? The direction is credible: the measures improve rental project economics, and rental is the only segment that grew. But no source reviewed here estimates how many GTA rental starts would have happened without the federal measures. The PBO explicitly declined to estimate the GST rebate's effect on units [6]. Urbanation–FRPO's study is commissioned by the Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario, an industry association that benefits from the incentives continuing. Its conclusion should be read with that in mind: the incentive framework begins expiring in 2029 and should be extended [13]. Its starts counts are measured data; its attribution is the industry's account. Two other forces would push developers toward rental even without new subsidies, which makes attribution harder. One is that condo presales collapsed, so rental became the only financeable tenure. The other is that CMHC records some proposed condo projects converting to rental [1]. Inference: some of the rental surge is the same projects changing tenure, not net new supply. Urbanation's count of 27,715 units added to the rental pipeline in the first half of 2026 explicitly includes "condo-to-rental application conversions" [11].

Toronto's federal rental deals. On August 5, 2026, Canada and Toronto announced a partnership covering 18 projects of more than 5,600 rental homes [8]. Nine projects on City-owned land get more than $310 million from BCH, for 1,885 homes including 739 affordable. Nine purpose-built rental projects get more than $1.8 billion in ACLP financing, for 3,720 homes including 1,079 affordable. Up to $600 million more in ACLP financing is held for future Toronto projects [8]. Construction is expected to begin on more than 4,500 homes across the portfolio before the end of 2026, and the BCH projects are to be substantially complete by March 2031 [8]. All of it remains subject to due diligence, underwriting and signed agreements [8]. Inference: if those 4,500 starts happen in late 2026, they would be a large share of the CMA's remaining 2026 starts, given a trend near 25,000 SAAR [2]. Some of the projects also appear to overlap with earlier city commitments. For example, 72 Perth Avenue is described as delivering units under the city's Rental Housing Supply Program [8], which the city had already funded in 2024 to "unstick" about 6,000 rental homes across 18 projects [5]. Those homes would then be counted by several governments at once.

The limits of the rental surge. Three facts constrain how much it achieves. First, it does not replace the condo pipeline. About half of new condo supply has typically been rented out, so Urbanation concludes that new purpose-built rentals "will replace only a portion of the rental supply being lost as the condo pipeline unwinds" [11]. Second, rents have softened while supply grows. Vacancy in GTHA rental buildings completed since 2000 rose to 3.7% in Q4-2025, and two-thirds of buildings offered incentives [10]. In Q2-2026, vacancy in such buildings at least one year old was 6.8% [11]. That figure uses a new definition Urbanation adopted in 2026, so it is not directly comparable with the 3.7% [11]. Softer rents squeeze returns on the next projects. Third, the pipeline is large but stalled: "The GTHA currently has over 150,000 approved rentals in the pipeline waiting to become economically feasible." [10] The Urbanation–FRPO study still projects a 74,000-unit rental gap in the GTHA by 2036, with only a thin 3,000-unit surplus in the City of Toronto that it calls front-loaded and dependent on population data likely to be revised [13].

6. The 2026 ownership measures and Build Canada Homes: early and small

HST removal. The first quarter after the HST change showed some effect, but mostly on unsold inventory, not new starts. Urbanation reported GTHA new-condo sales up 52% year over year to 702 units in Q2-2026, the first annual gain since Q3-2023, though still 86% below the 10-year average for the quarter [12]. Of those, 535 were sales of completed projects, including bulk sales to investors. Pre-construction sales, the ones that finance future starts, fell 80% to 50 units [12]. Urbanation explains this by the rebate's design: construction must start before March 31, 2027 and be substantially complete by December 31, 2029, so buyers in new pre-construction projects risk not qualifying [12]. Final rules were not confirmed until June [12]. Inference: as designed, the measure clears existing inventory and supports projects already near a start. It does little for projects that would start after March 2027. The government's claim of 8,000 additional Ontario starts [15] cannot yet be checked against CMHC data; through September 2026, Ontario's year-to-date starts were still down 5% [2].

Development-charge cuts. Toronto's cuts of 40–60% take effect after council approval and must stay in place for at least three years [16]. The city estimates savings of about $83,000 on a new single or semi-detached home [16]. CMHC's Fall 2026 report counts lower or deferred development charges among the measures improving project viability [1]. Ottawa's city-wide participation in the same provincial program is noted in that report [1]. No starts data yet isolates the effect of these cuts; they are forward-looking by design [15].

Build Canada Homes. The PBO's December 2025 assessment is the only independent estimate of BCH's supply effect. Assuming unit costs similar to comparable CMHC programs, BCH's spending and asset-development authorities would produce about 26,000 units over five years nationally. That is a 2.1% increase in completions over the PBO's baseline and 3.7% of the PBO's estimated 2035 housing gap of 690,000 units [7]. About 13,000 of the units would be affordable to low-income households [7]. BCH's own direct development represents 1,605 expected units a year, or 0.6% of baseline completions [7]. The PBO frames BCH within "a large decline in support for housing affordability." Total planned federal housing-program spending falls 56% by 2028-29, as the Canada Housing Benefit, the Affordable Housing Fund and the HAF expire and Budget 2025 cuts CMHC housing programs by a further $2.4 billion over 2026-27 to 2029-30 [7]. The PBO also notes that BCH's affordability benchmarks are generous. For illustration, a 2-bedroom rent of $2,168 a month would count as affordable to a median-income household, 97% above the 2021 national median market rent of $1,100 for a 2-bedroom [7].

In Toronto specifically, BCH's first visible commitment is the $310 million, 1,885-home, nine-project portfolio announced in August 2026 [8]. Inference: set against CMHC's estimate that the Toronto CMA needs 20,000–26,000 more starts each year than it is on track to build [1], this portfolio is about one month's shortfall, spread over a delivery period to 2031. BCH may matter for affordability and for testing modular and mass-timber methods, which several of the Toronto projects use [8]. It cannot close the GTA's volume gap on the scale the PBO projects.

3Beyond this question

• Questions about who gets credit for these programs are separate from whether the programs work. Canopticon's existing articles on the origins of Build Canada Homes deal with authorship. This report deals with effect, and finds the supply effect in the GTA small so far, whoever designed the programs. A later article can say that without reopening the authorship argument.
• The GTA result is a tenure story, not a total-supply story. Federal policy since 2023 has mostly subsidised one tenure, purpose-built rental, while the ownership pipeline, condos and freehold, has collapsed for reasons the subsidies do not reach. Anyone reporting a "record" in GTA housing construction should say which tenure it is in.
• Starts are the metric to watch, not permits or announcements. The HAF's permit success alongside falling starts in Toronto [4][5] shows that counting permits can make a program look effective when construction is falling. CMHC's monthly starts release (next: November 17, 2026 [2]) is the best available test of the 2026 measures.
• There is a timing risk. CMHC warns that the main risk is building too little during the downturn and being short when demand returns [1]. Urbanation's condo pipeline data point the same way [12]. The ownership-side measures expire or end on fixed dates (HST relief March 31, 2027 [15]; development-charge cuts after at least three years [16]), and the rental incentives begin expiring in 2029 [13]. Inference: the measures could expire just as the post-2027 supply drought they aim to prevent arrives.
• This connects to the record's work on prices and markets. Falling GTA condo rents and investor-owned units with negative cash flow ($1,338 a month above realised rent for 2025 completions [10]) bear on the record's work on rents and pricing.

4Open questions

• No counterfactual exists for the rental surge. Nobody has published an estimate of how many GTA rental starts the GST rebate, the ACLP or municipal incentives caused, as opposed to developers switching from condo to rental because condos stopped selling. The PBO says the GST effect cannot be projected [6]. Industry studies attribute the rise to the incentives but are commissioned by beneficiaries [13].
• The ACLP's size and GTA share are undocumented here. The $55 billion figure appears only in the Urbanation–FRPO release [13]; CMHC's program page gives no total [9]. No source reviewed gives the number of GTA rental starts financed by the ACLP.
• Final HAF results are pending. Toronto's three-year permit window closes December 31, 2026 [5]. Its 2025 permit count, and HAF results for Mississauga (below baseline in the PBO's review [4]), Brampton, the York and Durham municipalities and Hamilton, were not obtained in this pass. CMHC's HAF progress data pages could not be retrieved.
• Whether the HST measure produces starts before March 31, 2027. Only one quarter of sales data exists [12]. CMHC starts data through December 2026 and March 2027 will settle whether the claim of 8,000 additional Ontario starts [15] holds.
• The Toronto partnership's 4,500 starts by the end of 2026 [8]. Whether they happen, and how many were already counted in earlier city programs [5], can be checked against CMHC's starts data and the city's project lists early in 2027.
• The geographies do not match. CMHC's Toronto CMA, BILD's GTA and Urbanation's GTHA cover different areas. No single public series gives starts by tenure for the full GTHA that can be reconciled with all three.
• Coverage was thin on the province's own figures. Ontario's primary release on the Toronto development-charge agreement was not machine-readable, so the terms here come from a trade-press summary [16]. Provincial data on development-charge cuts across GTA municipalities were not reviewed.
• Toronto's mayoral election on October 26, 2026 may change the city's incentive programs. That could affect both the development-charge cuts and the city's rental incentives.

5Sources

1. Fall 2026 Housing Supply Report — Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, September 10, 2026
2. Housing starts and construction data for September 2026 — Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, October 16, 2026
3. Housing starts up 5.6% in 2025 from 2024 — Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, January 16, 2026
4. An Update on the Housing Accelerator Fund — Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, July 10, 2025
5. Progress Update – Housing Accelerator Fund (Report for Action) — City of Toronto, Deputy City Manager, Development and Growth Services, February 4, 2025
6. Foregone revenue from enhanced GST Rental Rebate on purpose-built rental housing — Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, May 9, 2024
7. Build Canada Homes and the Outlook for Housing Programs under Budget 2025 — Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, December 2, 2025
8. Backgrounder: Canada and Toronto announce new partnership to build thousands of new homes — Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, August 5, 2026
9. Apartment Construction Loan Program — Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, program page (accessed October 2026)
10. Nearly 10,000 GTHA Rentals Started Construction in 2025 — Urbanation, January 29, 2026
11. GTHA Rental Market Shows Improvement in Q2 — Urbanation, July 27, 2026
12. GTHA New Condo Sales Increase Over 50% in Q2 — Urbanation, July 20, 2026
13. Ontario Still Facing 121,000-Unit Rental Shortage Despite Record Construction — Urbanation, study prepared for the Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario, August 25, 2026
14. Record low December new home sales in the GTA capped off 2025 as the worst year on record — Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), data from Altus Group, press release via GlobeNewswire, January 22, 2026
15. Buying a new build home? Say bye to the HST — CP24 / CTV News, March 30, 2026
16. Historic $1.5B deal cuts Toronto's development charges — Canadian Apartment Magazine (REMI Network), June 25, 2026; summarises the Ontario Newsroom release on the Toronto agreement (release 1007662), which could not be retrieved in machine-readable form