federal housing minister meets with kingston modular home builder
the federal build canada homes has made modular building designs a priority to create housing quickly.
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darrell searles, president of lodestar structures, right, leads gregor robertson, federal minister of housing and infrastructure, centre, and kingston and the islands mp mark gerretsen on a tour of one of the company's house designs in kingston, ont. on friday, nov. 28, 2025
elliot ferguson
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the whig-standard
kingston — canada’s housing and infrastructure minister toured a local modular home builder friday morning.
gregor robertson, minister of housing and infrastructure, met with the head of lodestar structures on sydenham road.
the company specializes in modular buildings incorporating precast concrete, a building design the federal government indicated would be prioritized in coming years for government housing contracts.
“this is the kind of innovation that we need to see at big scale across canada to tackle the housing crisis, robertson said.
“we are prioritizing modern methods of construction. to use our terminology, basically, manufactured housing components that are factory built and then brought to site and assembled faster, cheaper, and greener,” robertson said. “we want to make sure we’re helping scale up the best technology for getting homes built more affordably and empowering a whole new generation of companies and technology in canada because we are not building fast enough. we are not affordable enough.
“you look at sweden. fifty per cent of their homes are manufactured in a factory. in canada, we’re less than five per cent still, so we’re way behind on modernizing the industry,” he said.
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“companies like lodestar are really our big hope for transforming the industry to make homes more affordable and and get them built faster to solve the crisis we’re in.”
kingston and the islands mp mark gerretsen, who organized the minister’s visit, said the liberal government is looking for companies that can build housing quickly using new technology and techniques.
“i think you know, lodestar can play a huge role in helping to build housing quickly across the whole country,” gerretsen said.
darrell searles, president of lodestar, said the minister’s visit was an opportunity to let the federal government know about the company’s approach to home building.
“we’ve been building homes forever, with hand tools, in the weather, exposed to the environment,” searles said.
“all of this stuff is built in environmentally protected conditions and then moved to site and installed on site,” he said of the concrete-framed, three-storey modular house that his workers were able to assemble on the company’s property friday.
“you’re not losing time. you’re not losing money. you’re not risking a product’s timeline.”
the federal government launched its new build canada homes following the election earlier this year and this month’s budged included funding for the agency.
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the agency is aimed at building affordable housing and priority for funding is to be given to projects that can be implemented quickly, capitalizing on a stock of federal land that is to be made available for housing.
in early february, the federal government announced that among the properties it wanted to see used for housing development was the former kingston penitentiary property.
on friday, robertson and gerretsen downplayed the potential of redeveloping the penitentiary, which since its closing has been a lucrative tourist attraction for the city.
“we’re looking at all federal lands, all the public land we have, and considering the best options for adding housing,” robertson said. “obviously federal lands have lots of different uses, where it makes sense to add affordable housing, we want to make that a priority.
“i think historically the federal government’s been slow to move on changing the use of federal lands.”
“that was the previous government that said that and identified those properties,” gerretsen added. “i’ve since had conversations with people in the minister’s office and told them how ludicrous i thought it was.
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“within pspc, they, they tend to agree that that’s the case,” he added. “i don’t think it’s off the list, but that list included a number of properties, originally, to explore and i don’t think it’s one that they’re continuing to.”
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