87,000 Canadian Demolitions:
Toronto Up 17x Since 2018
March 24, 2026
In 2018, Toronto issued 38 demolition permits. In 2025, it issued 642. That is a 17-fold increase in seven years, and no other Canadian city comes close to that rate of change.
We mapped 87,000 demolition permits across 16 cities to see where Canada's building stock is being torn down, and how fast. What came back were four distinct patterns: Toronto's sudden spike, Calgary's steady inner-city replacement, Vancouver's policy-driven zigzag, and Montreal's high-volume maintenance of aging boroughs.
Toronto: 38 to 642
Toronto's demolition count sat in the double digits for years. It crossed 100 in 2021, 300 in 2023, and passed 600 in 2025. The timing aligns with Ontario's push to allow multiplexes in residential zones and the broader densification policies that followed Bill 23.
This is happening against a backdrop of falling condo prices in Toronto and a construction sector under pressure from stalled projects. Buildings are coming down. Whether what replaces them gets built on schedule is a different question.
Each circle represents a cluster of demolition permits. Larger circles mean more demolitions in that area. The concentration runs through midtown and into the inner suburbs, the same corridors where the city expects the densest new housing.
Calgary: The Inner-City Replacement Cycle
Calgary's pattern looks nothing like Toronto's. There is no spike. Instead, there is a steady upward slope: 673 demolition permits in 2018, 903 in 2025. The activity concentrates almost entirely in inner-city neighborhoods west of downtown: Altadore, West Hillhurst, Killarney/Glengarry, Mount Pleasant. These are postwar bungalow neighborhoods being replaced, lot by lot, with larger infill homes. It is methodical, not frantic.
| Neighborhood | Demolitions |
|---|
| Altadore | 1,076 |
| West Hillhurst | 833 |
| Killarney/Glengarry | 809 |
| Mount Pleasant | 735 |
Montreal: High Volume, No Acceleration
Montreal has more demolition permits than any city in the dataset, but the trend line is flat. It peaked at 814 in 2021 and has drifted down since. This is a city with a large stock of pre-war buildings that need constant turnover. The top boroughs are the same ones that always top this list: Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, the Plateau, Verdun. Montreal is not building up to something. It is maintaining what it has.
| Borough | Demolitions |
|---|
| Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie | 2,822 |
| Le Plateau-Mont-Royal | 2,600 |
| Verdun | 2,415 |
| Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve | 2,220 |
| Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc-Extension | 1,847 |
Vancouver: Policy Whiplash on the Map
Vancouver spiked to 1,017 demolitions in 2022, pulled back to 631 in 2024, then rebounded to 772 in 2025. The zigzag reflects a city that keeps changing the rules. Character home protections, laneway housing incentives, and shifting zoning policies have made Vancouver's demolition rate the most volatile of any major city. The activity is concentrated on the East Side: Kensington-Cedar Cottage, Renfrew-Collingwood, Hastings-Sunrise. These are the neighborhoods where single-family lots are being cleared for duplexes and multiplexes.
| Neighborhood | Demolitions |
|---|
| Kensington-Cedar Cottage | 768 |
| Renfrew-Collingwood | 635 |
| Hastings-Sunrise | 615 |
| Dunbar-Southlands | 527 |
Winnipeg and Edmonton: Steady Churn
The prairie cities show neither Toronto's spike nor Montreal's stasis. Winnipeg holds steady in the 600-900 range annually. Edmonton is similar. In both cities, demolitions spread across dozens of neighborhoods without concentrating in a few the way Calgary's do.
Ottawa: Incomplete Data, Familiar Pattern
Ottawa reported 380 demolition permits in 2018 and 297 in 2023, then the count drops to 4 in 2025. That is a data gap, not a policy shift. The map below only shows pre-2024 permits. The pattern, while it lasted, looks familiar: demolitions in older central neighborhoods like the Glebe, Westboro, and Alta Vista.
What the Patterns Tell You
Seven cities, four different stories. Toronto is in the middle of a demolition surge with no precedent in its own data. Calgary is replacing inner-city bungalows with infill at a steady, predictable rate. Vancouver's numbers swing with each policy change. Montreal keeps a high baseline without any acceleration.
None of these neighborhoods are disappearing permanently. They are being replaced. The question the demolition data alone cannot answer is: replaced with what? A bungalow becoming a fourplex is a net gain. A bungalow becoming a larger single-family home is not. The permit data downstream, what gets built on cleared lots, is where that story continues.
Query the Data
Every permit in this analysis comes from the BuildData API. Filter by city, permit type, date range, neighborhood, or full-text search.
GET /v1/permits?municipality=toronto
&permit_type=demolition
&issued_after=2024-01-01
&group_by=neighbourhood
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