Housing Minister Gregor Robertson says Ottawa’s Spring Economic Update points to a clear path out of the housing crunch and that’s ramping up construction workforce while overhauling how homes are built. 

In Tuesday’s update, the Liberal government is promising to spend nearly $6 billion on a strategy to train at least 80,000 skilled workers to become Red Seal certified to help deliver Canada’s housing, infrastructure and defence needs. 

READ MORE: Housing supply gap persists, but price decreased by 20 per cent, SEU shows

“We need the people, we need the jobs, and so this big investment in training is really critical for Canada,” Robertson told reporters at a post-caucus scrum on Wednesday. 

The update also marks that $2 billion of the $6 billion package to train young people entering the skilled trades over the next five years. As Ottawa looks to modernize homebuilding, Gregor Robertson said the focus will also be on keeping those workers in the sector. 

Under the “Team Canada Strong” plan, the allocated funding will focus on initiatives like wage subsidies, apprenticeship training grants, labour mobility tax credits, training bonuses and employer incentives. 

Robertson added that the government is also looking into decisions on temporary foreign workers. 

When asked by a reporter whether the planned boost in skilled trades workers will be enough to close the labour gap, Robertson said the government’s investments in the spring economic update “meet the moment,” adding that while scaling up capacity will take time, Ottawa is on the path. 

“That involves a lot more workers as well to run that machinery and training involved in that. So that’s how we make the home building industry more efficient, we bring down the cost of production, and we create jobs to scale up our home building,” Robertson said.