Good morning. This is Hanna Lee.
Canada is looking to get into modular housing next year. Luckily, we have a wealth of experience to draw from — it just comes from many other countries. We'll get into that below.
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THE LATEST
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- Scientists based in Australia, Japan and the U.S. have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "the development of metal-organic frameworks."
- Prime Minister Mark Carney is back in Ottawa today and is expected to be present for question period.
- Former fashion mogul Peter Nygard is due to appear in Winnipeg court.
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Canada is new to large-scale modular housing. But other countries have been here before
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(Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
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Canada will start experimenting with scaled-up, factory-built housing next year — and it has plenty to learn from other countries whose industries have already matured.
What's happening: Ottawa's newly launched agency, Build Canada Homes, is looking to fund the construction of 4,000 modular homes on federal land across the country in 2026. Currently limited to six cities, the public-private project could eventually scale up to build 45,000 homes. It's just a sliver of the 4.8 million homes we may need by 2030 to restore housing affordability, but the federal government is hoping modular homes could play a key role in alleviating the housing crisis.
Lessons from around the world: The majority of housing in Sweden is built with prefabricated elements; Japan and Singapore likewise have a sizeable share of them. Though this industry can sometimes be seen as a success story, prefabricated housing didn't take off quite to the same extent in the U.S., where an 1960s-era national modular housing strategy ultimately failed. Experts warn that this form of housing isn't a panacea — and its success in Canada will largely come down to design, quality and demand.
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Via Rail pays out $31M in travel vouchers because of train delays
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(Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)
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Hundreds of thousands of passengers whose Via Rail trains were more than one hour late since last fall have received compensation in the form of travel vouchers, which total $31 million, or seven per cent of the Crown corporation's 2024 revenue.
What's happening: CN imposed speed restrictions a year ago at all rail crossings used by Via, arguing its new trains may not be long or heavy enough to activate security measures each time. About half of all Via trains along that corridor were on time prior to that conflict; by this August, that had dropped to 29 per cent.
Why it matters: It's not good news for anyone, says Jacques Roy, a retired professor who specialized in logistics. "As taxpayers, we can't be happy to have to pay penalties like these," he said, "and it is even worse for users." The dispute is related to the number of axles on Via's new Venture trains — CN requires trains to have 32 axles, while Via's only have 24, when it runs a train made up of a locomotive and five cars.
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Trump says 'Canada will love us again' — but there's still no deal on tariffs after Carney meeting
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(Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
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U.S. President Donald Trump is working on a trade deal with Prime Minister Mark Carney that he believes Canadians will love — but there's still nothing concrete in sight.
What's happening: Carney, Trump and officials from both sides met for a face-to-face meeting and luncheon at the White House to try and figure out a resolution to the ongoing U.S. trade war. Canadians "will love us again," Trump said, while Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said there had been "substantial progress" in their talks.
What's next: Most of the Canadian delegation left this morning, while LeBlanc said he was staying behind to push for a deal. Those talks will focus on the steel, aluminum and energy sectors, he said, and how the two sides can figure something out that benefits both of their economic and security interests. Trump, for his part, stressed that he sees Canada as an economic competitor and that he wants to displace Canadian-made cars and steel with domestic supply in the U.S. market.
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IN LIGHTER NEWS
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Meet your mirror image: How a friendship formed between two doppelgängers
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(Liam Harrap/CBC)
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Look at these two. They kind of really look alike, right? That's actually how they met. Felicia Harding and Brittany Delaney became friends when Delaney's former art teacher attended one of Harding's concerts and remarked on social media about their resemblance. "I clicked on her pictures and I was like, 'What the hell?'" Delaney told CBC's Radio Active.
"Usually when you get somebody mentioning that you look alike to somebody else, you look at the person and you think, 'I don't even see it, or I guess I see it a little bit,'" says Harding. "But when I looked at photos of Brittany, I was shocked because she really does look like me. And so we became friends."
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