Northern housing must be built as an integrated ecosystem, by the North and for the North

The recently launched (BCH) initiative marks the federal government’s most ambitious effort to build affordable homes since the Second World War.

The $13 billion initiative promises a building surge to emulate Canada’s post-war national housing program by doubling the national output of housing.

This effort to aggressively stimulate growth in Canadian affordable housing construction includes the working as a developer, rapid construction on public land, innovative modular construction methods and partnerships with private capital to push the pace.

For many Canadians, this may seem like a decisive response to the country’s housing crisis while also promoting Canadian sovereignty during tumultuous relations with the United States and other geopolitical developments.

But for the North, the parallels between the role of housing policy now and in the should give us pause. The building boom following the Second World War established many of the , , and northerners face today.

Lessons from the post-war era

Amid Cold War tensions and fears of Soviet encroachment following the Second World War, and the United States moved to militarize and secure the Arctic.

Both countries established weather stations, the , airbases and other strategic infrastructure . This also fuelled Canadian efforts to create or expand permanent northern settlements.

These efforts on Indigenous peoples who previously moved seasonally through vast territories in patterns shaped by ecological knowledge and deep relationships with the land. This was often pursued through , reshaping and ways of life.

This push to secure the North was accompanied by a rapid expansion of in the 1950s and ‘60s to meet national housing strategies. Southern-style houses were imported into the North, detached from northern cultures, landscapes and climates, and administered through colonial governance structures.

Construction of these homes relied on southern labour and materials, leaving communities with buildings but not the authority, tools or training needed to construct or maintain them. Rather than recognize and learn from the and sustainability that northern, Indigenous peoples had been practising , the government sought to impose control and authority through northern housing.

This era laid the groundwork for the housing precarity that northerners continue to feel today. Yet BCH uses the same language and approach — , advocating rapid deployment, standardized technologies, , and a . This undermines northerners’ abilities to self-determine and direct their own sustainable housing systems.

A Northern Housing Ecosystem (NHE) approach re-imagines northern housing not as a one-off construction campaign but as an interconnected system involving governance, economy, design, training, maintenance, and social wellbeing.

A different approach required

The North of 2026 is not the North of 1950. is accelerating permafrost thaw, reshaping ecosystems, and exposing structural vulnerabilities in buildings and infrastructure caused by southern construction methods.

Dependence on . Simultaneously, Indigenous Peoples across the North have developed , , and that offer powerful alternatives.

A re-imagines northern housing not as a one-off construction campaign but as an interconnected system involving governance, economy, design, training, maintenance, and social wellbeing.

It aligns with Indigenous-led housing innovations already underway — from the work of the and , to regional training and design initiatives across the North.

The NHE asserts that housing is tied to health, education, economic development, energy use and cultural vitality. Housing cannot be governed within silos; it must be part of a living system.

To support northern housing autonomy and sustainability, BCH must adopt principles rooted in this ecosystem approach.

Principles include promotion of a northern housing economy where housing is collective infrastructure that focuses on community wellbeing and a sense of home for all northerners, prioritized over a market-based logic.

This fosters housing autonomy via northern and Indigenous control over governance, design, construction, repair, and maintenance — the opposite of the dependency system of the post-war era.

Indigenous Peoples across the North have developed community-led housing strategies, design innovations, and governance models that offer powerful alternatives.

A sustainable northern housing future

The foundational question should no longer be: How many houses can we deliver quickly? Instead, it must be: How can we build a sustainable northern housing future?

This requires structural change in housing delivery. Short-term federal funding cycles and crisis-framing create pressure to spend and build quickly. That results in prioritizing communities with more administrative capacity, risks reinforcing inequities and rushes decisions that compromise sustainability.

Without concrete efforts to right the wrongs of the past, BCH will reproduce a housing system that never adequately or sustainably served the North. While BCH represents a major federal investment, the North needs more than housing units. It needs autonomy, climate-appropriate design, skilled local labour, and local business development.

A sustainable northern housing future is possible, but only if programs like BCH evolve from a fast unit-counting exercise into an ecosystem-based strategy rooted in Indigenous leadership and northern expertise. That way a northern housing system can be built that will sustain communities for generations — by the North, with the North and for the North.

This Conversation Canada article was co-authored by Shelagh McCartney (Toronto Metropolitan University), Aimee Pugsley (PhD Student, McGill University), Julia Christensen (��ɫ��Ƶ), Mylène Riva (McGill University), and Rebecca Schiff, (University of Lethbridge).

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

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