Canada Must Treat Timber Like Cars, Not Cabins

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Canada sits at the intersection of two crises that are converging in uncomfortable ways. Housing supply has fallen behind demand for decades and affordability is sliding out of reach. The construction workforce is aging and stretched thin. At the same time, buildings and construction remain a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, with much of the public focus on operating energy. The reality is that a third of the problem comes from embodied carbon in materials like cement and steel. Those emissions are locked in before anyone turns on a light or moves into a unit. Canada must find a lever that addresses both problems at once. Mass timber, combined with modular manufacturing, is that lever.

At 25 stories and just under 87 meters tall, Milwaukee’s Ascent tower is the tallest mass timber building in the world today. It is a hybrid with a concrete podium and core, but from the seventh floor up the frame and floors are glulam beams and mass timber panels. Ascent houses nearly 260 apartments and is already being treated as a test case for American adoption of tall timber. The developer estimates it locked away over 7,000 tons of carbon while saving months on construction time. The building makes the case that timber high rises are no longer experiments but practical choices in major cities. It is a clear signpost for where Canada should be looking.

As this series of now fifteen articles turned out to be much more comprehensive than I’d expected, I’ve summarized it into a 70 page report for the convenience of those who wish to internalize or share it.

The diagnosis is straightforward. Annual housing completions hover between 240,000 and 270,000 units, while population growth points to the need for about 500,000 per year to stabilize affordability. Traditional site built construction is not delivering that scale. Labor shortages make it unrealistic to simply throw more workers at the problem. At the same time, mid rise residential construction continues to pour concrete and erect steel, locking in millions of tons of emissions. These materials have a role in infrastructure, but they are overused where alternatives exist. The combination of slow delivery, scarce labor, and high embodied carbon is unsustainable.

The guiding policy is to treat housing like advanced manufacturing. Apartments and mid rise condos can be produced in factories, standardized for safety and efficiency, and shipped as panels or modules to be assembled quickly. Mass timber is the core material that makes this possible. It is strong, light, renewable, and produced from trees that sequester carbon as they grow. Modular methods allow for site preparation and factory production to occur in parallel, compressing schedules by 30 to 50%. Taken together, mass timber and modular turn housing delivery from a cottage industry into an industrial system.

Mark Carney’s Build Canada Homes plan points directly to this future. It targets 500,000 homes per year, backed by low cost loans and equity for prefab builders, and supported by pattern book designs that can be stamped out repeatedly across sites. The Transition Accelerator’s roadmap sets production goals of one million cubic meters by 2030 and double that by 2035. Government must act as an anchor customer by issuing multi year offtake contracts for modular mass timber housing. Pattern books of pre approved designs must be created so every project does not start from scratch. Finance must flow into 10 to 12 regional factories, each capable of producing at the scale required. Procurement rules must reward low carbon materials, ensuring that embodied carbon targets tilt the field toward timber over concrete and steel.

The numbers illustrate the point. A cubic meter of mass timber stores roughly a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere, while producing it emits about 120 kilograms of CO2. That means net storage rather than net emissions. Replacing concrete and steel with mass timber in mid rise apartments can cut embodied carbon by 15 to 40% depending on the design. Build times are compressed as well. A concrete structure often takes weeks per floor as forms are set, poured, and cured. A mass timber floor can be craned into place in days. Brock Commons, the 18 story student residence at UBC, was built in less than ten weeks for the structural portion, a pace impossible with concrete.

My long term forecasts for cement and steel demand through 2100 show both materials peaking much earlier than mainstream models anticipate and then tapering steadily for the rest of the century. The reason is not a collapse of construction but a shift in what we build with. Infrastructure build outs in China and other emerging economies are slowing. Advanced economies are moving into maintenance rather than expansion. Substitution pressures are growing stronger. Every mid rise apartment or office built in mass timber instead of reinforced concrete avoids both the cement in the slabs and the rebar that would have reinforced them. Over decades that compounds. Cement demand flattens and then declines to about half of today’s levels by 2100. Steel demand bends downward as electric arc furnaces dominate a smaller total market.

The opportunity for Canada is twofold. Domestically, meeting the housing target is only possible if industrialized timber methods are scaled. Internationally, demand for mass timber is rising quickly in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and Canada has the forest resources and expertise to capture a large share of that market. The risks are equally clear. If factories are not built, if insurance and code barriers remain unresolved, or if competitors move faster, Canada will miss the window. This moment will not repeat itself. Other countries are already scaling their industries.

Carbon accounting is a central part of the story. Environmental product declarations for Canadian CLT already show that more carbon is stored than emitted, cradle to gate. That makes the product net negative before it even reaches a site. The issue is not the science but the way accounting rules handle biogenic carbon. Current standards are conservative, treating storage as conditional until end of life is known. Canada should require EPDs for all structural materials, reward long term storage in buildings, and align with European and ISO standards so that exports meet global expectations. By doing so Canada can lead in carbon credibility while strengthening its domestic case.

Decarbonizing the forestry chain itself adds to the benefit. Diesel machinery, gas-fired kilns, and petrochemical adhesives all add emissions that can be avoided. Electric harvesters, battery trucks, biomass or heat pump kilns, and lignin-based adhesives are available or near commercial. With Canada’s electricity grid moving to net zero by 2035, these shifts would drive the process side close to zero emissions. Mass timber is already carbon negative. With an electrified supply chain it becomes an undeniable climate solution.

The bottlenecks today are not technical but institutional. Insurance premiums for mass timber projects can be four to ten times higher than for concrete. Building codes are inconsistent across provinces. Without consistent prescriptive codes and normalized risk premiums, adoption is slowed. Mass timber has to stop being treated as exotic and start being treated as routine. National data trusts that collect performance data, pooled risk pilots for insurance, reciprocity agreements on certifications, and prescriptive code adoption are the ways to make mass timber boring in the best sense of the word. When insurers and regulators treat it as just another material, the real advantages of cost, speed, and carbon are unlocked.

Internationally, the lessons are clear. Austria and Germany built scale early by integrating sawmills and CLT factories. Finland and Sweden aligned government strategy with corporate giants to build massive capacity. Japan drove adoption with clear standards and public procurement. The United States is scaling quickly after code changes opened the market. China and Brazil are beginning to emerge, with the potential to be both markets and competitors. Canada can either remain a supplier of raw logs or become an exporter of high value, carbon storing buildings. The next decade will decide which path it takes.

Workforce and finance are equally critical. Mass timber requires 3D modelers, CNC operators, and timber framers, not just general laborers. Training thousands of specialized workers must be a national priority. Lumber price volatility makes long term contracts and financial instruments essential for stability. Developers face unfamiliar cash flow demands and insurance hurdles that need tailored financial products and education. These are structural barriers, not technical ones, and they can be solved with coordinated action.

End of life strategies will determine whether timber remains a long term carbon store. Designing for disassembly and reuse, cascading into smaller uses, converting to biochar, or integrating carbon capture can extend the storage for centuries. Policies must focus on enabling these pathways without penalizing timber with obligations incumbents never faced. Reuse standards, biochar facilities, and engineered burial are realistic within the next decade. Canada can show that timber buildings remain climate assets long after their first use.

Fire safety remains the most common public concern. Thick timber members char at predictable rates, preserving core strength. Adhesive standards now ensure panels do not delaminate under heat. Full scale burn tests show timber buildings can withstand compartment fires and remain standing. The real risk is during construction, when sprinklers are not in place. Stronger construction phase fire standards and insurer education are needed. Completed and sprinklered timber buildings perform as well or better than steel or concrete in many scenarios.

The conclusion is simple. Mass timber is Canada’s fastest lever for tackling housing shortages, embodied carbon, and industrial competitiveness at the same time. It delivers housing faster, stores carbon rather than emitting it, and creates an advanced manufacturing sector with export potential. The alternative is to continue pouring concrete and exporting logs while others take the lead. Canada has the resources, the policies, and the market pull to seize the opportunity. The question is whether it chooses to act before the window closes.

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