Evan Siddall Returns to Federal Housing as Build Canada Homes Chair
The man who spent six years warning Canadians about housing bubbles and mortgage risk now sits at the other end of the problem: building the homes meant to fix it. Evan Siddall's appointment as inaugural chair of Build Canada Homes marks his second tour in federal housing policy, this time with a mandate focused less on managing risk and more on pouring concrete.
Siddall ran the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation from 2014 to 2020, a tenure remembered for public warnings about overheated markets and household debt levels that made him unpopular with real estate boards. His 2020 prediction of a COVID-era price collapse never materialized, and prices instead climbed another 40% in many markets over the next three years. That miss didn't disqualify him. If anything, it clarified the lesson federal policymakers have since absorbed: cooling demand doesn't work when supply remains frozen.
Build Canada Homes represents the pivot. The new Crown corporation, expected to reach full operational status in late 2026, won't be writing mortgage insurance or publishing research reports. It will act as a developer partner, a co-investor in high-density projects, and in some cases a builder of last resort where the private sector won't move without public de-risking. The $2 billion in initial seed funding through the Canada Build program targets apartment construction specifically, the format Ottawa believes can scale fastest.
Why Siddall Now
The choice reflects a preference for institutional memory over fresh blood. Siddall knows how Ottawa's housing machinery works, which means fewer months spent learning org charts and ministerial approval processes. He also brings recent private-sector experience from his post-CMHC role at the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, where he oversaw a portfolio that included real estate and infrastructure. That background matters when the job involves structuring deals that blend public capital with pension fund money and private development expertise.
His track record at CMHC was uneven on the demand side but coherent on the diagnosis. By 2018, Siddall was already arguing publicly that Canada's housing problem was structural, not cyclical. He pushed for supply-side interventions even while his organization's primary function remained demand-focused mortgage insurance. The contradiction was awkward then. It looks like preparation now.
The Actual Task
Build Canada Homes enters a market where the gap between needed supply and actual construction runs to 3.87 million units through 2030, according to CMHC's own projections. Federal spending through the National Housing Strategy has reached $82.5 billion, but announced units and delivered units remain two different numbers. The new agency's purpose is to close that gap by doing what Crown corporations theoretically do well: move faster than bureaucracies, take risks private capital won't, and stay focused when political winds shift.
The risk is redundancy. CMHC already has programs that fund affordable housing, co-invest in rental projects, and provide low-cost financing. Critics argue that adding another entity creates overlap, delays approvals, and splits accountability. Siddall's job will be proving the opposite: that a purpose-built development arm can move at construction speed rather than policy speed.
He inherits a model still being defined. The agency's full board has not been named. Its operating protocols, approval thresholds, and relationship to provincial housing bodies are still being negotiated. By the time the corporation is fully functional in late 2026, interest rates, construction costs, and migration inflows may have all shifted again, potentially misaligning the agency's first projects with the market it actually encounters.
Siddall has warned about housing problems for over a decade. Now he owns a piece of the solution, with public accountability attached. The appointment is a bet that the person who understood the structure of the problem can help build the structure that solves it.
The man who spent six years warning Canadians about housing bubbles and mortgage risk now sits at the other end of the problem: building the homes meant to fix it. Evan Siddall's appointment as inaugural chair of Build Canada Homes marks his second tour in federal housing policy, this time with a mandate focused less on managing risk and more on pouring concrete.
Siddall ran the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation from 2014 to 2020, a tenure remembered for public warnings about overheated markets and household debt levels that made him unpopular with real estate boards. His 2020 prediction of a COVID-era price collapse never materialized, and prices instead climbed another 40% in many markets over the next three years. That miss didn't disqualify him. If anything, it clarified the lesson federal policymakers have since absorbed: cooling demand doesn't work when supply remains frozen.
Build Canada Homes represents the pivot. The new Crown corporation, expected to reach full operational status in late 2026, won't be writing mortgage insurance or publishing research reports. It will act as a developer partner, a co-investor in high-density projects, and in some cases a builder of last resort where the private sector won't move without public de-risking. The $2 billion in initial seed funding through the Canada Build program targets apartment construction specifically, the format Ottawa believes can scale fastest.
Why Siddall Now
The choice reflects a preference for institutional memory over fresh blood. Siddall knows how Ottawa's housing machinery works, which means fewer months spent learning org charts and ministerial approval processes. He also brings recent private-sector experience from his post-CMHC role at the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, where he oversaw a portfolio that included real estate and infrastructure. That background matters when the job involves structuring deals that blend public capital with pension fund money and private development expertise.
His track record at CMHC was uneven on the demand side but coherent on the diagnosis. By 2018, Siddall was already arguing publicly that Canada's housing problem was structural, not cyclical. He pushed for supply-side interventions even while his organization's primary function remained demand-focused mortgage insurance. The contradiction was awkward then. It looks like preparation now.
The Actual Task
Build Canada Homes enters a market where the gap between needed supply and actual construction runs to 3.87 million units through 2030, according to CMHC's own projections. Federal spending through the National Housing Strategy has reached $82.5 billion, but announced units and delivered units remain two different numbers. The new agency's purpose is to close that gap by doing what Crown corporations theoretically do well: move faster than bureaucracies, take risks private capital won't, and stay focused when political winds shift.
The risk is redundancy. CMHC already has programs that fund affordable housing, co-invest in rental projects, and provide low-cost financing. Critics argue that adding another entity creates overlap, delays approvals, and splits accountability. Siddall's job will be proving the opposite: that a purpose-built development arm can move at construction speed rather than policy speed.
He inherits a model still being defined. The agency's full board has not been named. Its operating protocols, approval thresholds, and relationship to provincial housing bodies are still being negotiated. By the time the corporation is fully functional in late 2026, interest rates, construction costs, and migration inflows may have all shifted again, potentially misaligning the agency's first projects with the market it actually encounters.
Siddall has warned about housing problems for over a decade. Now he owns a piece of the solution, with public accountability attached. The appointment is a bet that the person who understood the structure of the problem can help build the structure that solves it.
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