CMHC’s August Starts Show B.C.’s Housing Dashboard Still Pointing Down
The NDP keeps promising housing delivery. The latest starts table and Victoria’s own fiscal update say the province is still losing ground.
David Eby’s government has made housing delivery one of its signature promises. That makes the newest Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation numbers more than another spreadsheet. They are a scoreboard.
CMHC’s August 2026 release says Canada’s six-month housing-starts trend fell 1.3% from July to August. In British Columbia, the trend also moved down: total starts fell from 37,039 in July to 36,622 in August, a one-per-cent decline. Single-detached starts fell three per cent. All other housing forms, the category that includes multi-unit homes, fell one per cent.
That is not the direction British Columbians were promised after years of housing plans, density reforms, targets, financing announcements and political victory laps. The public was told that aggressive provincial action would unlock supply. CMHC’s table shows the province is still struggling to turn policy churn into foundations, framing and keys.
The NDP’s problem is not just one month of CMHC data. On September 14, B.C.’s First Quarterly Report said housing starts were down 9.3% and home sales were down 6% year-to-date to July. The government itself pointed to economic uncertainty, affordability challenges, labour-market softness and the pause in Bank of Canada interest-rate cuts. Those are real pressures. They are also exactly why a government that centralizes housing power should be judged by delivery, not by slogans.
Budget 2026 had forecast about 44,210 housing starts in 2026 and 45,920 in 2027. Those forecasts were tied to government action and public and private investment. But the latest public signals are weaker than the sales pitch. BCREA reported August MLS residential unit sales of 5,653 across B.C., down 4.7% from August 2025 and 25.4% below the ten-year average for the month.
The accountability question is straightforward: if the NDP’s housing machine is working, why are the starts and sales indicators still flashing warning lights? If interest rates, labour weakness and affordability are holding builders and buyers back, then government should say plainly which programs are producing units, which ones are stalled, and which ones are mostly press-conference material.
B.C. does not need another oversized “housing plan” sign at an idle construction site. It needs a public delivery ledger: starts by community, completions by program, permit-to-start timelines, project cancellations, taxpayer exposure, and an honest comparison between budget forecasts and actual construction.
Eby asked voters to judge his government on results. CMHC’s August release and the province’s own quarterly report give voters a fair place to start. The numbers are not matching the promise.