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*Winner - Best Tech Podcast - 2025 Quill Podcast Awards*
British Columbia is experiencing an unprecedented housing crisis. While addressing various aspects of the housing supply chain is essential, no single approach can fully solve the challenges we face in scaling housing production. So, what's the blueprint for growth?
In November 2023, DIGITAL — Canada's Global Innovation Cluster for digital technologies — launched its Housing Growth Innovation Program with support from the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs. The program brings together collaborative teams of industry leaders to accelerate technology-driven approaches that are driving real, tangible growth for British Columbia's housing production sector.
Amy Vilis, Director of Housing Growth Innovation at DIGITAL, chats with innovators doing groundbreaking work within DIGITAL's Housing Growth Innovation Program to develop and implement technology-based solutions within British Columbia's housing sector across the full scale of end-to-end production. These conversations showcase how ideas are making it into the real world where they can become comprehensive, viable and, best of all, achievable solutions to accelerate housing production for British Columbians.
Amy Villis (00:01.358)
The province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs is leading a major shift in how homes get planned, approved and built. Powering not just more housing production, but thriving communities our province desperately needs.
Digital innovation sits at the heart of this change, digitizing the BC building codes and deploying automation tools that make compliance faster, more consistent and scalable for vibrant, complete neighborhoods. From family-friendly suburbs to urban infill and Indigenous-led developments. That momentum sparked a big question. How do we transform the entire housing ecosystem, permitting construction operations to deliver more homes faster while building resilient communities where people can live,
work and connect. That's why the province partnered with Digital, Canada's global innovation cluster for digital technologies to launch the Housing Growth Innovation Program, a 9 million four-year initiative designed to unlock real housing production and technology to create capacity across BC. This program unites industry, innovators, communities and government to shatter silos and forge a digital backbone for speed and scale.
From digital permitting and modular construction to workforce development and indigenous led innovation that creates inclusive, future-proof places to call home. Modern methods of construction alone won't cut it if the surrounding systems lag. It's shared data, automation, AI, internet of things and digital twins that drive smarter decisions, faster builds and communities that work for everyone. Reducing costs, waste and timelines while boosting affordability and livability.
By modernizing how we build, BC is positioning itself as a North American leader in digital construction and permitting, turning innovation into tangible communities on the ground. I'm Amy Villas, Director of Housing Growth Innovation Program at Digital, and this is Blueprint for Growth, Innovation and Housing.
Amy Villis (02:00.782)
Today I'm thrilled to be joined by someone helping drive this shift, the Honourable Minister Christine Boyle, Minister of Housing for British Columbia. Minister Boyle, lovely to have some time and be here with you today. First off, mean, the best and the kind of the coolest thing for me is we both worked with the City of Vancouver at the same time. So you and I were working towards the same goals at the City of Vancouver during some truly pivotal years in housing. You're on council, championing rental and non-market projects.
and I was leading the short program to fast track social housing approvals, which ultimately helped spark the first provincial investment in digitization. Today as the MLA of Vancouver Little Mountain, you are deeply aware of the housing needs facing communities across BC. And now as the Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs, you're carrying that commitment towards a provincial scale. I know you're really looking at streamlining approvals and supporting more affordable climate resilient from city council to cabinet.
How has that journey shaped your approach to housing creation today?
Yeah, I really do think my time in local government has been so informative in the work I'm doing now, particularly because we work so closely with local governments and we need to and understanding how challenging that job is, I think, is helpful. But I really do think about all of the housing work in terms of people and communities. And so I think about the neighbourhood that I grew up in that was full of kids, you know, like we hear about now in stories, mean, kids running around playing kick the can in the street until someone's parent, especially someone's mom, kind of sent everyone home for dinner. We had a lively community and I want that for everyone. And I know that means neighbourhoods changing in their form so that they can retain that vibrancy in their character. And that has been really important for me in how I think about housing and that's that human centered piece connected to a climate piece really the kind of walkable communities, connected communities that we know we need to reduce emissions and to build resiliency. Those pieces are what gets me excited about streamlining processes and building better homes more affordably and more quickly. I can get really nerdy about that and I'm excited that we get to be nerdy about that together for a little bit. And for me, all of it is rooted in the kinds of communities that I want us to be able to build all across the province. when I was in local government, I was excited about the work that this provincial government had started doing, really using every tool to deliver better and more affordable homes, make sure they weren't sitting empty, that homes are for people, and particularly creating homes that work for those most struggling. Incredibly honored to get to be in the role I am now and keep doing that work.
Amy Villis
Yeah, I agree. I think it all comes down to understanding those visions for those communities, understanding the needs. And I know that there's been some great work around the needs assessment on what are we building the right type of housing. And through the use of innovation, we're able to get more data to help better inform our policy decisions and move forward using different innovative tools to help design.
We're working with the Malahat Nation on a first-use degenerative design, like that kind of concept of are we building the right thing in the right way for the communities for sure, and at that heart. So I honor that work that it's fantastic. And I mean, that brings me to my next question, which is about partnership. So our partnership with the province here at Digital has been, for me, the past two years working alongside has been fantastic. I can see the strength and the growth of alignment and provide that neutral role in an ecosystem of bringing the private sector and the public sector together has been key. And we've been able to take the investment of the province and take six million dollars and invest in some really cool technology and individuals to see a growth of over 13 million. And so I think those partnerships are a real key to driving change. From your perspective, what becomes possible when the province partners and co-invests in situations like this to break down those sites?
Minister Boyle
I think it's the best and only way to get things done. I mean, we have many important roles to play at the provincial level and we can't do it alone. Just like there's no one silver bullet that solves housing for us. There's no one player in the field who can do it all on their own. And so I'm glad that we have such good partners. I feel really lucky here in BC. that the housing ecosystem is so strong and creative and we have so many good folks to be looking to and learning from and working with and a huge amount of creative work on that innovation side. Like I said, we work closely with local governments and that's an incredibly important partnership. The community housing sector in BC is strong and diverse, you working with nations, working with nonprofits. So all of that is what makes it happen. And then we have important roles in that. We have tools that we've been using to end restrictive single-family zoning, to encourage the use of mass timber construction, but that's only successful with the innovation that happens to make it successful. We've been enabling more small scale multi-unit housing like duplexes and townhomes. And again, that's successful because of the good and creative work that has been happening around standardized design and modern methods of construction. I mean, all of the tools we can use, we are using and they're only successful because of partnership. then we hear back what needs to be tweaked and work from there. I love that style of work and I'm glad to be one piece of it and know that there are so many people I can reach out to and say, can you explain this piece to me or what are you doing here or how do we solve this problem? I think digital is a great example of all of those partnerships. I love hearing about the types of projects that are being made possible from that innovation, the Malahat Nation Project is one of them. I was hearing recently about the Radical EO project with Simplicity and the City of Salmon arm and the District of North Bend contributing around municipal digital readiness for permitting. West Group's Steelworks project, looking at digital manufacturing techniques and pre-cut steel pieces. I mean, like I said, all of that is, I think, a means to get to where I want to get to, which is the types of vibrant communities we know we need, but they're exciting ways to get there and they're moving us forward in really good ways. We know we need more innovation. We have it here in BC in droves and I'm keen to keep moving it forward.
Amy Villis
I I agree. And the best, one of the most important things about the work that the province has been doing in British Columbia is that, you the awareness about permitting. I mean, we talk about it, you hear about it, it gets blamed all the time for all the bottleneck pieces. But the real amazing piece was some stakeholder engagement that the province did around like finding out really what the issues were and boiling it down to builders and developers really want to know exactly what to do so they can create complete applications and get there faster. Local governments are asking for better quality applications. from that work, the province has established the BC Building Permit Hub to tackle that head on. So maybe can you talk a little bit about how it's transforming the speed and certainty for housing approvals for communities across BC?
Minister Boyle (10:10.382)
I can happily talk about that. love that. Building Permit Hub was launched in 2024. Like you said, a lot of work really teasing apart where the challenges were all the way along the line and what could be done to improve the processes and improve the speed, which we know ultimately also reduces costs, which is so important. So the Building Permit Hub makes it easier for builders to submit applications online through a streamlined and standardized approach, and it helps local governments receive and review applications online. It helps local governments by automatically reviewing the submissions to ensure they're compliant with key parts of the building code, checking the completeness, providing a pre-evaluation for compliance with parts of the building code like the energy or zero carbon step codes.
So it's really moving things along in a faster way and it allows folks in local government to then be more creative with the time they have. So they're not stuck checking every line and slowing things down in that way. That time gets to be spent on the bigger pieces. We have eight communities who are using PermitHub now and we're working with others to scale up and deliver a consistent experience for builders, making it easier and faster to get projects approved regardless of jurisdiction. So my ministry is currently engaging with 30 more local governments who are interested in using the hub and to support them in taking that step we announced in the fall a third intake of the Local Government Development Approvals Program, which is funding to support local governments in creating more efficient approvals processes and supporting more local governments in implementing the Building Permit Hub. We know it's a useful tool and of course, in local governments, everyone is stretched and the work it takes to get over that hump to train up and be ready to use a new tool can be daunting. so the local government
Minister Boyle (12:25.74)
Development Approvals Program is to help local governments get there. It's how we moved the needle at the City of Vancouver was that initial funding from that program allowed us to go, okay, here we go. And years later, we're making some inroads. I really do think it's a great way to level set different regional areas in BC. And it provides that idea of tool equity too, where the larger municipalities might have more horsepower. The smaller ones might not have permitting issues. They might have building inspector issues. it maintains some standards and allows some transparency. And I think it's really cool because we're one of the only provinces across Canada that are taking that approach. So once again, leading the charge and it leads me to my next piece. You can pick up a, I was gonna say a newspaper. I am that old. I still miss flipping the pages. But we're all talking about Dash, the digitally accelerated standardized housing. We're honored to have a program in our portfolio that is helping assist that and some fantastic stuff. I refer to Dash just to make people laugh as well as like the whole meal deal. The standardized designs through to the BIM models, real-time supply checking, full kit of parts, off-site, like all the buzzwords all contained there and all bundled together, but the cool thing for me and the beauty of it all is that it's also a la carte. You can pick up the pieces as you need and what you need.
Amy Villis
So I think it's a spectacular program for that instead of one way, one route, you can cherry pick what it is that you need from the program. So it's a true game changer for BC. Maybe if you could speak to a little bit about the program and where you see it taking BC and leading, leading in the country and in North America, really.
Minister Boyle (14:16.738)
Yeah, again, happy to and I also think it's game changing. And I'm grateful again for that approach that the province has taken with partners to really look at how can we improve every piece along the line here. So DASH, digitally accelerated standardized housing, the Made in BC online platform helping developers, home builders and nonprofits design and construct. It's currently focused on three to six story buildings. That's what we knew would make the biggest difference to start out and focused on helping build them again more quickly and at a lower cost using products manufactured in BC. It's a first in Canada and it replaces traditional review and construction methods with a modern industrialized approach. I have gotten to look around the online tools of it and be walked through it. It's incredible, as you say, all of the pieces all put together in there. The goal, again, is transforming the way we deliver affordable housing so that we can build these vibrant communities that we know we need. When it's fully implemented, Dash will and already reducing approval times for pre-zone sites with partner municipalities, translating design into prefabricated components, reducing time and development phases, reducing construction costs, reducing carbon emissions, improving safety for workers on site through standardized construction and prefabrication, improved labor productivity within the residential construction sector, which we know is needed as well. And again, all of it so that seniors and families and folks working in our communities can find a good home faster and more affordable.
Amy Villis
Excellent. And as we talked about earlier, idea of tool equity. So, you you can log in whether you're a small local government or small builder and have access to the same tools and it sort of provides more opportunity and level setting to unlocking the use of the land.
Minister Boyle
Yeah, and it's been one of a number of places where BC's been leading in the country and I was glad we had a meeting of provincial and territorial federal housing ministers all together and Dash came in and did a presentation on their work to housing ministers across the country and I'm just so proud of the work that we're doing and to get to see others pick up from it I think is great.
Amy Villis
I totally agree and love the team involved in it. They're fantastic group of public and private companies. It's amazing. Leading that, I love hearing that nugget. It makes me really proud and happy too. On the federal alignment, as we just discussed, we really are moving the needle in industrialized and modern methods here in BC with the prefabricated and digitally enabled approaches. Build Canada Homes, you can't walk around town and not hear about Build Canada Homes and the term modern methods of construction. for me, like the modern methods of construction, the digital backbone is very, very, very important. But the work that the province is doing, maybe if you can dig into a little bit about those conversations you're having around those round tables with other ministers from other provinces and how we're aligning with that national goal.
Because I do find, you know, when we're out here on the West Coast, there is a bit of a divide at times with what's happening in Ontario. And we've been spending quite a bit of time, or I spent quite a bit of time in Ontario this summer, of helping pull that narrative to the West. And we just had a lovely convening of all the Modern Methods folks in town recently. So I know they'd love to hear how, on your perspective, where we see BC playing on the national level.
Minister Boyle
Yeah, I continue to be really proud of the leadership that's coming out of BC on modern methods, on digitization, as well as all of these other policy tools that we have been leading on. We were out front on our policy and regulatory tools around short-term rentals ahead of other provinces, and it's made a huge difference in returning thousands of good long-term rental units onto the long-term housing market and allowing more people to find homes in their communities. BC has been leading on our Indigenous housing fund. We were the first province or territory to fund on reserve housing for Indigenous people, which is a federal responsibility, but we knew it was a challenge and a significant gap here in BC. Both, I think, steps to be really proud of the work that we're doing around land use and ending restrictive zoning is leading across the country as well. I also wanted to just mention we announced an MOU with Quebec recently. That was, again, I think an example of the work we're leading on and the work we can partner on across the country. The agreement really positions BC as a Canadian leader in construction innovation. We're working together on shared goals in the construction sector, improving building codes and technology to make it easier to build more homes. And we have agreed to work toward, we've agreed to work toward an agreement to share intellectual property and help advance other priorities, some important shared priorities with Quebec around climate friendly construction and the digital permitting piece. So we are keen to work in partnership. keen to share what's working here because it can work elsewhere and to keep learning from folks across the country and evaluating what best practices are working elsewhere so we can bring them back home to benefit British Columbians as well.
Amy Villis
I love that and I do think like you know we can all run around in our silos from time to time and we see proof of concepts come over and over and over again and I you know I'll get pitched an idea weekly about something and I'm like yeah well I've seen that before you should talk to this person and it's no different across the provinces where it's like the more we can open up our cupboards and provide you know learnings of our discoveries the faster we'll all get to that place and you know industry is really screaming for standardized codes and the only way we're going to do that is to break down, take a regional approach, but break down how we share and create a new digital landscape with our regulatory environment as well. So super cool. Okay, I know we're going to run out of time in a sec. So I've got a couple of questions and I ask every one of my guests these questions because I love the varied answers depending what seat and you hold one of my favorite and most interesting seats to hear how. Here how you take on this, I can't wait. The big question is, if Canada invests in a digital technology or innovation right now to truly accelerate housing.
Minister Boyle
Like I said at the beginning, what really drives me is this vision of vibrant, affordable communities, of people knowing their neighbors, of people being able to find a good, affordable home they can raise their kids in or retire in. Those human stories that I get all the time, you can imagine in a public role, people come up to me at the grocery store and my kids' soccer game and everywhere else to tell me their housing stories or challenges or complaints and concerns, the whole gamut. And I'm happy to hear all of them because all those stories make up the future that really drives me where everyone in BC has a safe home in a community that they love and that they can afford. All of the rest of these tools are what get us there for me. That future means it means permitting approvals that take days, not weeks. It means housing projects moving from concept to construction in months and not years. And it means investments in innovative construction methods and mass timber and prefabrication becoming the norm and getting from interesting and creative idea to our standard practice. I can see us getting there and I'm excited to one day from that future position, look backwards and talk about the path it took to get there. You know, in the same way we describe newspapers to our children who think it sounds very old fashioned. So I'm so grateful to be on that path and with so many good people and we know what we, I think big picture know what we need to do to get there and there's the devils in a lot of the details but the more that we're learning from one another and moving there together we figure out those details as we go.
Amy Villis
I agree and I think what I appreciate is I wrote a mission brief when we first started this program to see what is our call to action here. My end of the call to action was that every community in BC can build the homes that they need for their community and that is completely where we align. The technology, the people, the partnerships, the knowledge sharing, all of those things are going to support how we can build faster and increase those housing production numbers, which is ultimately where we need to go. And I haven't seen a sector so jazzed to accomplish that. It's pretty rad. It's pretty cool. So I'm so grateful for your leadership, for you joining, for your support to digital. This program has been and continues to be quite the success in the sector, bringing folks together and I'm honored to be able to do my part in helping those communities get those homes that they so much need. So I thank you for the conversation today. I am 100 % available to help answer those questions when you need answers. I certainly spend a lot of time myself asking others questions to dial in and to get further down the path. So please reach out at any time.
Minister Boyle
I just want to wrap up by also saying a huge thank you. feel so lucky to be in this role and be constantly learning from folks and everywhere I go there's interesting and creative work happening and I'm sure the folks listening and the folks that you are working with are all part of that as well.
Amy Villis
Love it. Today's conversation shows what's possible when policy alignment, technology adoption and partners move together, unlocking faster approvals, scalable construction and smarter systems to deliver the homes in British Columbia. This is exactly the momentum that the Housing Growth Innovation Program exists to accelerate. To our listeners, thanks so much for tuning into this second season of Blueprint for Growth. We'll talk to you next time.
This podcast is powered by Digital's Housing Growth Innovation Program with support from the province of British Columbia and the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs.
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