The federal government is dusting off a Second World War-era housing plan to ignite the pace of home construction in Canada.

Housing Minister Sean Fraser on Tuesday confirmed Global News’ report from Monday that the minority Liberals were taking the nearly 80-year-old program off the shelf and revamping it.

The program, which was run by what was at the time known as Wartime Housing Ltd., provided standardized housing blueprints to builders.

“In many instances, these homes were being built in a period of about 36 hours, and we intend to take these lessons from our history books and bring them into the 21st century,” Fraser told reporters in Ottawa.

“We are going to be moving forward with a catalogue of pre-approved designs at the federal level.”

Fraser added the government will begin consultations on the matter in January, with the goal to have them available for developers next fall.

The program from Wartime Housing and its successor, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC), saw hundreds of thousands of homes built from thousands of pre-approved plans between the 1940s and the late 1970s.

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