Canadian Wood Producers Back Factory-Built Construction to Speed Housing Supply

Canadian wood producers and manufacturers say increased use of prefabricated, modular, and panelized wood construction could help address Canada’s housing shortage while boosting demand for wood products, ConstructConnect reported (6-2-26).

The proposal is outlined in a recent Canada West Foundation (CWF) report based on a December 2025 roundtable convened by the Canadian Wood Council (CWC) and the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC). The report identifies these approaches collectively as Modern Methods of Construction, or MMC.

Eric Johnson, senior VP of federal government relations and communications for FPAC and CWC, said factory-built components can make better use of materials and skilled labor, reduce waste, and increase productivity.

“Prefabrication also accelerates project timelines by allowing site preparation and building fabrication to happen at the same time,” Johnson said. “By shifting more construction into controlled manufacturing environments, MMC reduces delays caused by weather, site conditions and labor shortages, while improving quality control and creating greater cost certainty for project teams and owners.”

Johnson said wood plays a key role in low- to mid-rise housing, adding that barriers to scaling up wood-based housing in Canada are regulatory and organizational rather than technical. He said CWC analysis shows an incremental domestic wood demand opportunity of more than 500 million board feet under current housing starts if adoption barriers, including code fragmentation, approval delays, and inconsistent municipal interpretation, are removed.

Perkins&Will, which supports modular housing systems, recently received funding from DIGITAL, Canada’s Global Innovation Cluster for Digital Technologies, to develop modular timber housing systems. The firm said recent building code changes allowing unenclosed mass timber construction up to eight stories and enclosed mass timber construction up to 18 stories could help streamline mid-rise residential construction, strengthen domestic industry, and reduce embodied carbon.