Federal Government: 1)Ottawa wants to get banks, pension funds involved in affordable housing:minister; 2)Canadians sitting on $2 billion in uncashed federal cheques: documents; 3)’It’s our livelihood’: Clearview Township worries as Ottawa plans military radar site; 4)Immigration minister wants department to track exits of temporary residents; 5)’Canada is not Minnesota,’ minister says in reaction to U.S. immigration raids
1)Ottawa wants to get banks, pension funds involved in affordable housing:minister
Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press
By Craig Lord, Feb. 1, 2026
The federal housing minister says he wants to ramp up the lagging pace of homebuilding in some provinces by bringing developers off the sidelines and into Ottawa’s affordable housing projects.
Gregor Robertson also said in an interview that the feds’ new Build Canada Homes agency is working on getting Canadian banks and pension funds to play an active role in financing affordable homes.
Robertson sat down with The Canadian Press recently as MPs returned to the House of Commons and Prime Minister Mark Carney rolled out the Liberals’ latest affordability policy — a top-up to the GST credit pitched as a way to help Canadians cope with the rising cost of groceries and other essentials.
Robertson, a first-time MP turned cabinet minister and the former mayor of Vancouver, acknowledged that housing has long been a pain point for households struggling to make ends meet.
Nine months into his mandate, Robertson said he is focusing his efforts on the lowest rungs of the housing ladder, where people are most vulnerable.
“I’m very focused on delivering affordable housing as a critical piece for improving affordability in Canada,” he said.
Build Canada Homes launched in September with an initial $13 billion capitalization. The agency was tasked with scaling up affordable or “non-market” housing and carries much of the burden of a Liberal promise to double the pace of home construction.
The term “non-market” indicates projects that typically have support from government or other sources, allowing units to be rented out below market rates.
While most Canadians won’t live in non-market housing, Robertson said mixed developments — with some affordable units and others offered at market rents — can help to stimulate more activity across the price scale.
One of the first Build Canada Homes projects announced, the 540-unit Arbo development in Toronto, will be at least 40 per cent affordable housing when complete.
The Liberals have been trying for years to stimulate homebuilding in Canada, in part by offering funding directly to municipalities to change zoning and lower other barriers to construction.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported housing starts were up 5.6 per cent across the country in 2025. The single-digit gain was driven by a flurry of building in Alberta and Quebec, while Ontario and British Columbia saw outright declines.
CMHC said momentum in new homebuilding was strong in the spring and summer but stalled in the fall.
Robertson acknowledged the mixed results across the country during his first few months in the housing portfolio.
He also acknowledged that, in order to meet the Liberals’ lofty homebuilding targets, the bulk of the construction will have to be led by the private sector.
The pace of that private sector construction is dictated by market conditions — interest rates, material prices, homebuyer demand — that are largely outside the government’s control.
But Robertson said Ottawa will look to smooth out the valleys in the market by “crowding” investment from the federal government, the provinces and other partners into affordable housing.
The pitch, as he put it, is that when developers don’t see a business case for a new project in the market, Build Canada Homes can step in to make a proposal for affordable housing more attractive.
That would, in theory, put some of Canada’s builders to work in a public-supported housing capacity until market conditions improve for private-led developments.
“Certainly in markets where the market is slow, we have a big opportunity to redeploy all the talents of industry to building affordable and make best use of this opportunity, which is long overdue,” Robertson said.
“We want to see a win-win here for the economy and for affordable housing.”
Mike Moffatt, housing policy expert and founding director of the Missing Middle Institute, said it makes sense for Ottawa to step in “to try and smooth out the natural housing cycles.”
He said the trick will be in the timing. If the government fails to move quickly enough to get new homes approved and construction underway, projects might only ramp up when the market is getting hot again — effectively missing a window to boost the affordable supply in Canada.
Scaling up efforts on the non-market side during a lull in construction can also be politically precarious if output then drops off when builders are busy again, Moffatt said.
“People kind of point out, ‘Well, you were doing 10,000 homes three years ago, and now you’re only doing 2,000 homes, what’s going on here?'” he said.
“Theoretically, I think it makes a great deal of sense. The challenge is both in the implementation and some of the politics involved.”
Robertson said Build Canada Homes has a more “nimble” approach than previous government programs.
The agency has received 450 applications so far from a mix of proponents, the minister said. Some are led by the provinces, some are for community housing proposals and some are led by private sector developers.
Robertson said his quest to fill the affordable housing gap won’t necessarily mean Ottawa is bankrolling those efforts alone.
He specifically mentioned Canadian banks and the country’s pension funds as pools of capital he’d like to see deployed for affordable housing.
“My hope is that we can attract capital by dramatically reducing the risk with affordable housing projects,” he said. “The federal government, in partnership with other levels and investors, can de-risk affordable housing and make it a long-term stable investment for Canadian capital.”
Robertson suggested that Build Canada Homes CEO Ana Bailao, former deputy mayor of Toronto, has been working on attracting new sources of capital to Ottawa’s affordable housing strategy and said to “stay tuned.”
Moffatt said it’s not clear to him what tax breaks or other mechanisms the federal government could use to convince big financial institutions to invest in affordable housing.
By its nature, affordable or social housing tends to be non-profit, Moffatt noted. But pension funds and banks have a duty to their beneficiaries and shareholders to maximize profit.
“Providing very low-income housing to low-income families is a great thing to do, but by its very nature, it doesn’t doesn’t generate a lot of profit,” Moffatt said.
“I think that’s the missing ingredient here … It’s not clear to me how they’re going to pull this off.”
2)Canadians sitting on $2 billion in uncashed federal cheques: documents
Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press
By Kyle Duggan, Feb. 2, 2026.
Canadians have left more than $2 billion on the table by not cashing millions of paper cheques mailed out by the federal government, documents tabled recently in Parliament say.
The data says roughly 3.9 million paper cheques that were issued to Canadians over the past four fiscal years — worth $2,159,665,155. — went uncashed.
They included various tax refunds, pension cheques and benefits issued by the Canada Revenue Agency and other departments.
Canadians failed to deposit roughly $141 million in Canada Carbon Rebate cheques and $50 million in Climate Action tax credits issued to residents of B.C. — cancelled rebates that were designed to offset the cost of carbon pricing.
Even though those rebate programs have ended, government cheques never expire and can be replaced if they are lost or damaged.
Taxpayers can check their Canada Revenue Agency accounts to see whether they were issued cheques they never cashed, or call the agency by phone to find out.
Roughly $42.8 million in cheques issued to families through the Canada Child Benefit — a tax-free monthly payment meant to help with the expense of raising children — also went uncollected.
The federal government prefers to pay Canadians by direct deposit and only 8.51 per cent of total federal payments are made by cheque. Many agencies still issue large numbers of cheques.
The administrative cost for the government to issue a cheque is about $1.83. That means issuing the 121 million cheques mailed out from April 1, 2022 to Sept. 30, 2025 likely cost taxpayers about $222 million.
The information was disclosed in a government response published by Parliament on Jan. 26 to a research question posed by Conservative finance critic Adam Chambers.
Prepared by Public Services and Procurement Canada, the response states that it’s up to individual departments and agencies to manage their transition away from paper cheques.
It also said the federal government had at one point explored creating a prepaid card program for some government payments. Ottawa decided that would be too expensive compared to direct deposit, and Canadians were largely against the idea of introducing prepaid cards.
3) ‘It’s our livelihood’: Clearview Township worries as Ottawa plans military radar site
Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press
By Sharif Hassan, February 2, 2026
The first sign that something was afoot in the rural Ontario community of Clearview Township came about a year ago, when Mayor Doug Measures found out that a local farm was registered to the Crown months after it was listed for sale.
A few months later, he learned at a meeting with federal government officials that the township of nearly 15,000 people, about 40 kilometres west of Barrie, had been chosen as a receiving station site for Ottawa’s over-the-horizon military radar project.
Three days after that meeting, Measures said some farmers and property owners in Clearview got letters from the Department of National Defence asking if they would be interested in selling their land.
The move was met with strong opposition from residents and their elected officials.
“I had no idea that this was happening, so it was a complete surprise to all of us,” Measures said, calling it “a very frustrating situation.”
The radar system, with an estimated cost of $6 billion, is being built to monitor airspace from the Canada-United States border to the Arctic for incoming missiles. It’s part of Canada’s commitment to spend $38.6 billion over the next two decades to bolster the North American Aerospace Defence Command, and done in co-operation with Australia, which built a similar early warning radar network system.
In addition to the radar receiving site in Clearview, DND has chosen Kawartha Lakes, northwest of Peterborough, as the location for a transmitting station. The sites will include large antennas, up to 45 metres tall in some cases, with supporting infrastructure.
Terri Jackman, who lives in a farmhouse across from the proposed site in Clearview, just northwest of New Lowell, said three officials from the Department of National Defence visited her property after she received a letter inquiry.
She remembers being told that the trees across her house would be cut down and there would be night lighting and security cameras pointing away from the site toward the neighbouring properties.
“So, my house would probably be under surveillance with the security cameras because I’m just across the road from it,” she said. “I was quite shocked of course. I was angry, I was upset, I was very concerned about what I was hearing.”
Jackman and her husband, who died a few years ago, moved into the house in 1988.
“We built a lot of memories there … I was planning on living there until I could no longer take care of it myself,” she said.
The Department of National Defence said it has been in “regular contact” with local communities, Indigenous rightsholders, municipalities and provincial officials about the project, sharing details as they become available.
But that hasn’t eased tensions and wide-ranging concerns, locals said.
The radar project would change the town’s economic landscape and if it goes ahead as advertised, vast swaths of prime agriculture land could be lost, they said.
Some worry whether it is safe to live close to a radar receiving site, while others are fearful about the environmental impact as the proposed location is not far from Minesing Wetlands, a conservation area with ecological significance.
More importantly, those who received letters from DND but refused to sell their properties are anxious about displacement and expropriation of their land, although the department said that it has no expropriation plans at this time.
Clearview’s mayor said DND has so far purchased an entire parcel of land that includes three properties, a farm and two neighbouring homes, for a total of around 750 acres. He said that while the federal government signalled it may seek to acquire an additional 4,000 acres, there hasn’t been any indication of when, how, and if it would make the purchase. Note: to see maps of the area, go to: https://barrie360.com/clearview-ottawa-military-radar-site/
The uncertainty has left many residents’ lives in limbo, Measures said.
He said he is all for national security and protection, but he is against using “some of the best agricultural lands in central Ontario” for that purpose.
“We have two competing issues right now. It’s national security or food security,” he said, adding that people in his town are more worried about the latter.
DND said it conducted public consultations online last year, collecting more than 400 responses, and held two public engagement sessions in September.
Measures said many questions were asked in those sessions but only a few answers were actually provided. He has wondered why Canadian Forces Base Borden, located half an hour south of Clearview, couldn’t house the receiving station. Another option could be the Crown-owned lands in northern Ontario, he said.
The Department of National Defence said choosing a site for the radar project is determined by a “set of complex and inflexible requirements” that include latitude, land size, environmental constraints, a suitable distance from radio noise sources and proximity to electrical power sources.
In a statement sent to The Canadian Press, DND said it has purchased the required land for the preliminary receiving site in Clearview and the transmitting site in Kawartha Lakes. Environmental requirements will be strictly followed, it said.
“Should future lands be required, DND will approach any property acquisitions fairly and respectfully,” it said. “Our goal in acquisitions processes is to be collaborative, have clear communication, and offer fair compensation.”
The department did not answer a followup question about the possibility of purchasing another 4,000 acres in Clearview.
It said it’s currently looking at possible locations for two additional sites in southern Ontario, but assured that’s it is “not currently working on expropriation of land plans.”
Work on the sites in Clearview and Kawartha Lakes is expected to begin early this year, with initial capabilities to be installed by the end of 2029, the department said.
But Jackman, the Clearview resident-turned-activist, said she is cautiously optimistic that the federal government could still be convinced to reconsider its decision. She has collected more than 2,000 signatures for petitions calling on Ottawa to stop building on already purchased land in her town.
“There are nights I don’t sleep very well thinking about it and I know I’m not alone on that,” said Jackman. “Everyone I speak with on this says the same thing.”
Among them is Rachel Brooks, who fears losing her family’s large farm and business as she waits for what comes next.
She moved to Clearview in 2009, after marrying her husband who has been living there for 45 years. The couple raised three children in their farmhouse on 100 acres of land.
Her husband farms corn, wheat, soy and canola. As their kids grew older, Brooks started her own business raising sheep and the size of her flock has now grown to 400.
She estimates that between 50 and 60 local landowners received the letters from DND asking if they would sell their land. Even though she replied “no,” she is still stressed about what might happen.
“I don’t want to uproot my home and my family,” she said, adding she’d hoped her children would continue living on the family farm.
“There is a lot at stake here because it’s not just our home as farmers. It’s our home, it’s our business, it is our livelihood. It is a culture … it’s a big deal,” she said.
“At the end of the day, what’s going to happen is what’s going to happen, but … we’re fighting.”
4)Immigration minister wants department to track exits of temporary residents
By David Baxter, Jan. 31, 2026
Immigration Minister Lena Diab says she wants her department to acquire the ability to track the number of people with temporary visas who are exiting the country.
The immigration department confirms almost 1.9 million temporary visas, including work and study permits, are expiring this year. More than 2.1 million expired last year.
Diab said the Canada Border Services Agency and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada are able to track some information about specific people and groups, but there’s no simple way to track how many temporary residents are leaving Canada.
Diab said she’d like to change that with the help of digital tools.
“There’s a number countries around the world that do track those. And I believe we need to also be doing that,” Diab said in a phone interview with The Canadian Press.
“Did we have the capabilities to do that before? No. Should we? I think yes, and that is something that you will see us working toward.”
Aaron McCrorie, CBSA vice president of intelligence and enforcement, told a House of Commons committee hearing on Oct. 21 that the agency can track who is leaving Canada, their method of transportation, their date of birth and the travel documents they use.
He said CBSA doesn’t currently have the ability to determine if someone is leaving because of an expired visa. McCrorie told the committee it can manually check that on a case-by-case basis, a process he described as “very labour-intensive.”
People with temporary visas contributed to a major increase in asylum claims in 2024.
A response to a written question from Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner on asylum claims shows more than 112,000 people on temporary resident visas and nearly 22,000 people with study permits applied for asylum in 2024.
Canada only approved 14 per cent of those claims from people on temporary resident visas, and 20 per cent of the claims from people with student visas.
About 6,600 temporary residents and 1,100 people with study permits made asylum claims in 2020. Most of these claims were approved.
Diab said the government’s border security bill C-12, now before the Senate, is intended to deter people from making asylum claims to extend their time in Canada.
The legislation says asylum claims won’t be forwarded to the Immigration and Refugee Board if the applicant has been in the country for more than one year as of June 24, 2020.
“Many people in the last couple years were probably advised that is your last option, just claim asylum. If people don’t know, they’re going to take the best advice they have, right? And so I recognize that,” Diab said.
“We’ve started to be clear and transparent and to tell people exactly what we expect of them, and what Canada’s immigration system can handle and what it cannot handle.”
Critics have accused the federal government of curbing the right to claim asylum. Diab has said that people who have been in Canada for more than a year can still apply for a pre-removal risk assessment.
The minister said this all is part of Ottawa’s efforts to restore public confidence in the immigration system following a sharp increase in the number of permanent and temporary residents being admitted annually. That number peaked at an admissions target of 485,000 permanent residents in 2024.
Diab said the government’s efforts to curb immigrant admission rates in the 2025 levels plan have allowed it to meet all of its targets for last year. The government says 393,500 permanent residents were admitted last year; the target for the year was 395,000.
Publicly available IRCC data on temporary resident arrivals says a combined 305,000 workers and students arrived between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30, 2025. The 2025 target was about 673,000 temporary residents.
“We are restoring control back to our immigration system. And we are returning us back to sustainability,” Diab said.
Diab told The Canadian Press that the department is piloting some new online immigration services — one offering a limited number of passport renewals and another offering some international travellers digital visas.
“We need to modernize our system because it is old … It is a huge undertaking. It will take a bit of time, but it has started and we don’t want to move too quickly on it because if it goes wrong, it’s a big problem for immigration,” Diab said.
The online passport renewal pilot began in December 2024 and is now open to up to 1,000 applications daily.
The digital visa pilot began on Nov. 27, 2025 and is open to what Diab’s department calls “a small group” of Moroccan travellers who were offered a digital version of their travel document in addition to a physical one.
IRCC says it is currently looking at how well digital visas work for travellers and airlines.
5)’Canada is not Minnesota,’ minister says in reaction to U.S. immigration raids
Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press
By Jim Bronskill, Jan. 31, 2026.
People gather for a protest on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree says he won’t pass judgment on the U.S. crackdown by federal forces in Minnesota that resulted in the deaths of two residents.
But he is quick to defend Canada’s respect for the law when removing people from the country under immigration provisions.
“What I would say is that Canada is not Minnesota,” Anandasangaree said in an interview earlier this week.
“I think my responsibility is not to opine on other countries’ processes but, more importantly, to ensure that our process is in line with Charter values, is in line with the rule of law and is in line with due process.”
Anandasangaree, who is responsible for the Canada Border Services Agency, said Ottawa removed more than 22,000 people last year “in a compassionate and humane manner” while adhering to due process “every step of the way.”
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and Customs and Border Protection have conducted intensive operations in Minnesota this month, sparking large protests and widespread outrage — especially since the shooting deaths of Minneapolis residents Renée Good and Alex Pretti.
Good was shot to death in her car Jan. 7 by an ICE officer, and Pretti was killed at a demonstration on Jan. 24 by Customs and Border Protection officers.
Anandasangaree played down the notion Canadian security agencies might be sharing less intelligence with U.S. counterparts these days because of the widely criticized U.S. tactics.
“It’s certainly true that Canada and the United States are going through a difficult patch in our long history, one that is being addressed by our prime minister,” he said.
But Anandasangaree was quick to add that co-operation and intelligence-sharing has continued among agencies and officials. He pointed to U.S. participation in the G7 security ministers meeting late last year in Ottawa and the RCMP’s involvement in the U.S.-led case against alleged drug kingpin Ryan Wedding.
“Our strongest relationship continues with the United States, notwithstanding the number of economic challenges that I think we face, and notwithstanding the overall international dimensions in which Canada finds itself today,” Anandasangaree said.
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said he raised the events unfolding in Minnesota at the first ministers meeting in Ottawa on Thursday.
He told reporters after the meeting he felt compelled to bring up the subject, given how much he has heard from people in his province, which borders Minnesota.
“Even when we were getting on the plane at the airport, I had some folks come up and just say they had close family living in Minnesota, and they’re very torn up about what’s happening, and they just want to be able to express that feeling and express the hope that we have for our neighbours and, in some cases, our family,” he said.
Kinew declined to reveal what other first ministers said on the topic.
“I did say that for Mr. Pretti, for Ms. Good, you know, I want us as a country to speak out … when we see things that don’t align with our Canadian values. I want us to continue to step up,” he said.
“I think that’s what it means to me when I hear our prime minister talk about principle and pragmatism in terms of our foreign policy.”
Kinew said it’s important to ensure there is food on the table, help with the cost of living, review the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement “and put ourselves in the best possible terms for those engagements.”
“We also have to look clearly into some things that are happening right next to us that are very unjust, and be able to say that we are going to continue being a voice of moral clarity, and that’s important for us as Canadians, so that we can hold our head high no matter what happens in our trade relationships with other countries,” he added.
Kinew said he also made the point during the first ministers meeting that Trump’s aggressive behaviour toward Canada is intended “to put us on the back foot when we’re negotiating.”
“If we are the voice of moral clarity, maybe we can destabilize Trump heading into the negotiations at a moral level. Maybe we can use morals to destabilize our negotiating partner and take the conversation to a level that he can’t keep up on,” Kinew said.
“And I guess the advantage of that approach is maybe that will help us with the trade negotiations, but it’s also the right thing to do.”