Mass timber could be the key to alleviating Canada’s housing and school shortages, industry experts told Woodrise 2025 in Vancouver this week, as the country faces a shortfall of more than three million homes by 2030.
“The need, especially here in Canada, is to deliver housing units fast,” according to Andrew Stiffman, vice-president of construction services at Kalesnikoff Mass Timber. “We cannot deliver on those using conventional construction. It’s going to take too long, it’s too risky, it’s too costly, so we’re really excited to bring these [technologies] forward as a solution.”
Stiffman highlighted multi-family residential projects as prime candidates for mass timber’s prefabricated panels and modules, which can be snapped together on site in a fraction of the time. He argued the same systems could replace ageing portable classrooms with purpose-built learning spaces. “Historically, we’ve met that [need] with basically trailers—so sticking our kids in pretty uninspired learning environments. We think this is a great middle ground from a cost and schedule perspective to those trailers, where we can deliver classroom expansion using mass timber modules quickly, but provide a great learning environment for our kids.”
Lower carbon emissions and high automation further strengthen the case for mass timber, said Clara Schmitz, head of international expansion at Germany’s Gropyus Technologies GmbH. “Thirty-eight per cent of global CO₂ emissions are caused by either the erection or the operation of buildings. This new construction must be built in the most sustainable way possible,” she said. Schmitz added that Gropyus’s Frankfurt-area plant, where robotic lines produce a wall every 16 minutes and a slab every 17 minutes, is enough for 3,500 housing units a year.
And on the policy front, Patrick Geers, a senior structural engineer and head of quality control at Alberta-based Western Archrib, urged governments to incorporate mass timber into their urban and provincial infrastructure strategies. “We should make sure that mass timber is embedded in the municipal and provincial infrastructure policies,” he said, adding that streamlined approvals, R&D investment and targeted training are vital to cement Canada’s role as a leader.
