Thank you for the opportunity to appear today.

My name is Patrick Chouinard. I'm the founder of Element5. We are a large, highly automated mass timber manufacturer in St. Thomas, Ontario.

The IKEA effect has made its way to the construction industry. We manufacture buildings in our factory and ship them to construction sites where they are assembled quickly, efficiently and affordably, rather than being constructed in the traditional sense.

Despite Europe being 30 years ahead of us, Canada is incredibly well positioned to become the centre of the mass timber industry globally.

Four years ago, we turned our attention to addressing affordable housing. We thought that since we can manufacture buildings quickly, affordably and in volume, maybe we have at least part of the solution to Ontario's affordable housing crisis. In four years, we have delivered seven buildings in Kitchener, York Region, Hamilton, Toronto, Sudbury and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, ranging from 18 to 43 units and from two to eight storeys, providing supportive housing, temporary shelters and transition housing for single women, women with children, single men and indigenous women at risk of homelessness.

The affordable housing crisis is fundamentally a supply problem: Demand exceeds supply. Clearly, there are only two solutions to the problem, in my view: Curb demand by stifling growth, reducing immigration and limiting the number of foreign students, or enable growth by focusing on the supply side of the problem, investing in manufacturing and building housing quickly.

I agree with the housing motion. It refers to investing in homebuilding technologies and exploring emerging materials, construction methods, energy-efficient systems, and digital innovations.

The government has played a pivotal role in our success as a manufacturer and in our ability to supply housing affordably, provincially under the PC government and federally under the Liberal government. We have received significant grants from the Ontario provincial government to help fund our factory, create jobs and boost Canadian exports; however, 80% of the affordable housing projects we have delivered so far have been partly funded by the federal government's rapid housing initiative.

We are living proof of the value of private-public partnerships. By July 2025, we will employ over 170 people and will be North America's largest mass timber manufacturer. Most of our projects have been supportive housing, mainly because that's where we see the greatest need. None of those projects would have gone ahead without funding from the rapid housing initiative.

The technology that we're applying to supportive housing is also being applied to other forms of housing: market-rate housing, retirement homes, student residences, indigenous housing, hotels and beyond.

There are many things the government can be doing to foster this form of construction—too many to suggest in the five minutes allotted. Let me leave you with these few suggestions.

One is to invest in the supply side of the housing problem by investing in manufacturing, Canadian innovation, Canadian forestry, Canadian labour and Canadian industry leadership.

Second, municipal governments must abandon traditional procurement systems—in other words, the “design-bid-build“ tender process—and adopt a design-build approach, which fosters innovation.

Third, there's talk of the rapid housing initiative being expensive. We attribute most of our success in affordable housing to the federal government's rapid housing initiative.

Mass timber is important to Canada in many ways. Leverage it to achieve our national housing objectives. We're using it to build indigenous infrastructure and housing. Several primary sawmills from which we source our raw materials are partly indigenous-owned. Because of the thermal mass properties of mass timber, buildings perform better. We've just finished a six-storey version for CityHousing Hamilton that was designed to the passive house standard.

Use mass timber to hit our climate goals. When building with mass timber, we're systematically leveraging our forests' natural ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store carbon, ultimately in the form of these beautiful buildings.

Use mass timber to improve environment and occupant health and, lastly, invest in it to create jobs, build our forestry sector, boost Canadian exports and become global leaders in this emerging industry.

Thank you.