Modular homes are future of Nunavut housing, federal minister says
Housing Minister Gregor Robertson says prefabricated construction is best way to go
Gregor Robertson, front, the federal minister of housing and infrastructure, walks with Premier John Main as they tour a 46-unit apartment building nearing completion in Iqaluit on Monday. (Photo by Daron Letts)
Prefabricated homes are the future for housing in Nunavut, says Gregor Robertson, the federal minister of housing and infrastructure, who was in Iqaluit on Monday.
“That’s really the direction for construction around the world,” he said. “We want to get on the leading edge of that.”
Construction of a 46-unit apartment building on Palaugaa Drive in Iqaluit is expected to be completed this spring. The building is part of the federal government’s Build Canada Homes initiative. (Photo by Daron Letts)
The federal government wants to have five per cent of Canada’s new housing stock made up of prefabricated homes, Robertson announced. In Nunavut, the plan is to have 30 per cent of homes built that way.
Prefabricated homes involve modular construction, where components are manufactured in a southern factory and then shipped north to be assembled on site. In Nunavut, they arrive by sealift.
Robertson spoke during a news conference after touring a 46-unit apartment building on Iqaluit’s Palaugaa Drive that is being constructed conventionally, not modularly. The work is nearing completion after 10 months.
Those dwellings are being built through the federal government’s Build Canada Homes initiative, in which it is working with provincial and territorial governments across the country.
The Nunavut portion is being paid for with $250 million from the federal government and $230 million from the Government of Nunavut. In September, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Build Canada Homes would help fund 700 new homes in Nunavut. In January, Robertson upped that to 750.
Build Canada Homes has committed to helping fund the homes within the next two to four years by working with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. as well as with Ottawa-based modular-home manufacturer Caivan.
Those 750 homes are included in the Government of Nunavut’s plan to build 3,000 new housing units between 2022 and 2030. Igluvut Corp., a not-for-profit housing corporation created by NTI last year, will manage construction of 25 of those homes.
“We’re going to deliver as fast as we can,” said Robertson.
Robertson, who is scheduled to visit Rankin Inlet on Tuesday, did not announce any new funding during his Iqaluit stop.
Baker Lake recently received material for 10 prefabricated homes from Caivan. Rankin Inlet and Arviat will also get housing through the federal program.
“We’re accelerating up the curve,” Robertson said.
Arviat is home to a new 64,000-square-foot modular homes factory, expected to manufacture 40 homes a year starting this spring. Run by Sakku Investments Corp., the business arm of the Kivalliq Inuit Association, the factory will supply components for the housing units to be built there.
Robertson was joined on the site tour Monday by Nunavut MP Lori Idlout.
Idlout — who left the NDP last week to sit as a member of the Liberal caucus — said last month that Nunavut is experiencing “the worst housing crisis in Canada.”
She struck a more optimistic tone during an interview Monday.
“We need to make sure that we do keep working toward ensuring that Nunavummiut have a sense of hope in knowing that they’ll be able to have their own homes,” Idlout said.
More meaningless noise.
The factory being built in Arviat is intended to produce 40 homes per year. Nunavut needs 500 homes each year, just to house the babies born 20 years earlier.
Nunavut needs 1,000 homes each and every year for at least the next decade to end the housing crisis for those already in Nunavut.
Then it needs houses for the estimated 20,000 Inuit who have left Nunavut but would return if there was a house and a job for them.
Has anyone seen a cost estimate for the houses to built in the Arviat factory? I haven’t.
40 homes per year in Nunavut would be a great thing (and built in Nunavut)! How is that meaningless noise?
Just because it doesn’t build 1000 homes a year (which is an impossibly ridiculous number), doesn’t mean it’s meaningless.
Nunavummiut have every right to be skeptical of big promises. But your complaint wasn’t about it not happening, it was that it isn’t enough. Can we not chip away at a problem?
Nunavut has been chipping away at the problem for 26 years.
Yet the crisis keeps getting worse.
are you a housing science type guy?
Build houses in China they can do it super cheap. If they started doing this 25 years ago there would be no housing crises
where were you 25 years ago>?
Nunavut’s housing system is fundamentally different from the rest of Canada. Across Canada, social/public housing makes up roughly 4% of the housing stock, and even when you include all three territories, it’s about 19%.
In Nunavut alone, however, public housing represents well over half of all homes (around 55–60%). That is not just higher — it is an entirely different model, where government is the dominant housing provider rather than a safety net.
That imbalance matters. In southern Canada, housing systems function because there is a mix — private ownership, rental markets, and a smaller public component. In Nunavut, that balance doesn’t exist. When most housing is publicly owned and subsidized, it limits the development of a market, reduces competition, reduces opportunities for homeownership, and concentrates long-term costs — operations, maintenance, and replacement — entirely on government.
If Nunavut truly wants to solve its housing crisis, the goal cannot just be to build more public housing. It has to be to rebuild the system! Public housing should supports those who need it most who are unable to work, while creating real pathways to ownership for those who can.
Without that shift, the territory risks locking itself into a model that is financially unsustainable and economically crippling, no matter how many more units are built.
Public housing is suppose to help people that are unable to work for what ever reason and low wage income earners that are mostly Inuit. So public housing very much needed.
Are Modular homes the future of Nunavut? Absolutely not. Are they part of the puzzle that is solving Nunavut’s housing shortage? Absolutely!
The issue at hand however is the attempt to try and justify the modular factory in Arviat as some golden goose. It is not. That entire project is behind schedule and over budget. It has received millions in government subsidies to date and will need more just to remain competitive with southern modular builders currently providing supply to the Territory. This factory will require ALL materials to be shipped from the south via maritime transport. Right there, without going one step further everyone understands that the cost to build will already be more expensive. Full stop! Someone will surely try and explain labour cost i.e. Nunavut vs South and if they do that is all you need to know about who hopes to gain monetarily from this endeavor and it is not the workers. The goal should be creating high paying jobs equal to those found in the south not the contrary.
It is understandable and admirable to try and promote growth from within. To try and address the housing crisis with local solutions. This factory however is not one. Using justifications such as job creation and self-reliance as rationale to promote this factory is farsighted. There is no such thing as self-reliance when every part, material, component and equipment you need to achieve said justification comes from outside the territory.
Nunavummiut need homes. Lots of them. They need them promptly. The economic model will dictate that to address even 50% of the current shortage you need to have homes being built far cheaper than the market currently can provide (stick build models). The availability of money determines that. To become a key component of the housing solution, the modular model has to provide the homes at a far better price than conventional stick builds. The argument or promotion about rapid deployment and installation is a factor to consider for sure. However, to understand if this a major factor Nunavummiut deserve and need to know what it costs exactly to deliver these units ready to be occupied. Not made-up numbers, not numbers that exclude costs buried somewhere else or not calculated. The real cost.
All this said. The reality is that the modular units that will be part of solving Nunavut’s Housing crisis will predominately come from the south to be installed by local contractors and local labour from the communities. Frankly, that should be the least of anyone’s concerns as long as it can be done economically and most importantly produces roofs over people heads. Fast.
We have been constructing pre-fab homes in Woodstock NB for over 20 years this is not something new. My only concern is are they built to handle arctic weather?
So let me get this right. In October 2022 the GN announced Nunavut 3000. Basically they would build 3000 new homes by 2030. I am not a math genius but simple math suggest 2030-2022 = years. 3000 homes divided by 8 years would require 375 new homes to be built each year to reach this target. So far we have not seen those new homes built at that rate.
Now in January 2026 the Federal Government announces they are going to support building 750 new homes in Nunavut. But for some reason we are taking that away from the 3000 homes the GN committed to build. How come we did not add it and aim to deliver 3,750 homes?
Again I am not a genius, but it all seems kind of simple to me. I am not suggesting building in Nunavut is simple. Just the math around the plan. Surely the GN and NHC had a plan…..right?
Modular homes are a relatively cheap and certainly fastest way to meet the housing needs of Nunavut. There is zero doubt about that.
If you wanted to use local materials, reduce or eliminate shipping costs, while producing a house that would be as efficient and durable for the longest, you would do something else.
You would buy an expanded polystyrene foam machine and bring it to Nunavut along with a polystryene granules. You would extrude styrofoam insulated concrete forms actually in the community you are building houses. You would then make concrete with local granular materials to fill the ICFs.
You would end up with a house that is almost indestructible, with 10″ thick walls that you could keep warm with a hair dryer (exaggeration), with very little mould risk. All this without the shiploads of lumber and ready made high volume insulation, or higher volume panels coming in every year.
The government is not even trying this.
Modular homes as public housing units will eventually bankrupt NHC, and place significant financial burden on the entire GN. Each new unit costs $20-30K a year to operate, after all.
Shaving off any of these operating costs would go along way to helping us sustain a government up here over time.
I see no long term thinking in the decisions that are being made today. It is pure crisis management.
I can’t believe you are being downvoted – While I don’t know the exact specifics of what you are suggesting, I do know that you are on to something. Nunavut is full of the material (sand, gravel, rock) that could be used to make housing. The famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright was a proponent of this, and built many houses using mostly on-site materials (his houses have longevity issues, the techniques were experimental in his time, but most are still standing.) Methods to use these elements that are already in each community exist. They need work and perfection to make them work in the harsh temperatures and winds of the north, but it would involve “outsiders” coming to experiment and study it and develop it, which would get people all wound up about “colonialism”. The only answer to “colonial” solutions is to go back to tents and Igloos 24/7/365, and nobody wants to do that. But that is where the answer is, anything other than that is just permanent catch-up to the frantic pace of the Nunavut baby machine.
You both must work in policy at the GN……