The Government of Quebec and the federal government reached an agreement on Friday regarding the construction of affordable housing, under which Ottawa will provide the provincial government with $900 million as part of the federal "Housing Accelerator Fund" program.

Federal Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, Sean Fraser, announced this agreement at the end of yesterday afternoon, describing it as "historic."

"We have reached an agreement with Quebec on housing. This agreement comes at a time when we must do everything we can to solve the housing crisis," said the housing minister in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government.

For her part, Quebec's Minister of Housing, France-Élaine Dancause, stated that the details of the agreement would be announced soon.

"I am very happy to have reached an agreement with Sean Fraser regarding the allocation of funds from the 'Housing Accelerator Fund'. (...) We will not make any further comments until then," Dancause added.

The Canadian Press learned that details of the agreement will be announced in the coming weeks.

Quebec Premier François Legault had called on the federal government last week to reach an agreement with his province by October 13.

Legault wanted to get confirmation from Ottawa about the agreement before the economic update that his finance minister, Eric Girard, is scheduled to deliver on November 7.

He mentioned at that time that Girard had told him that if his government wanted to include the $900 million in the economic update, the agreement with the federal government must be finalized "by the latest Friday of next week," which is today.

In the agreement, the Government of Quebec committed to matching the amount. Thus, a total of $1.8 billion will be invested to build affordable housing in the province over the next five years.

Quebec is the second largest of Canada's ten provinces in terms of population and economic size, with a population of 8.87 million, according to estimates from Statistics Canada for the third quarter of this year.