Is Canada Actually Building?
We Checked 2 Million Permits.
March 14, 2026 · Updated March 17, 2026
Everyone agrees Canada needs to build more housing. The federal target is 3.87 million new homes by 2031. But nobody asks the obvious question: which cities are actually building, and which ones are just patching what they have?
We classified 2 million building permits from 17 Canadian cities into six categories, then compared the new construction vs. renovation split in the 12 where both categories have enough data. The gap between the best and worst is 83x.
The split
For every new construction permit, how many renovations?
Each bar shows the share of new construction vs. renovation permits. Only permits classifiable as one or the other are included — trade permits (mechanical, plumbing) are excluded from this comparison.
Ottawa issues more new construction permits than renovations. Hamilton issues 83 renovations for every new build — though with only 275 new construction permits total, a handful of misclassifications could shift that number. Still: same country, same housing crisis, completely different responses.
Ottawa
0.4:1
63K new · 28K reno
Toronto
1.2:1
85K new · 104K reno
Hamilton
83:1
275 new · 23K reno
Zoom out and a pattern appears. Cities with room to expand — Ottawa, Winnipeg — build. Older, denser cities — Hamilton, Victoria, Montreal — renovate what they have. The exception is Edmonton: historically renovation-heavy, but in recent years it's flipped — now issuing 3x more new construction permits than renovations.
Geography
Where Canada is building vs. fixing
More building than fixing
2–10x more fixing
10x+ more fixing
Insufficient data
Circle size = total permit volume. Color = renovation-to-new-construction ratio.
The question is whether this is changing. Click Edmonton below — in 2015 it had nearly 2x more new construction than renovation. By 2019 the gap had narrowed. Now it's widening again. Toronto is surging — new construction tripled from 558 in 2015 to 1,707 in 2025.
Over time
New construction vs. renovation, 2015–2025
Select a city. Green = new construction, blue = renovation.
Here's what stands out: the cities with the tightest housing markets tend to issue the fewest new construction permits relative to renovations. The GTA suburbs, Victoria, and Montreal — all facing affordability crises — are overwhelmingly fixing existing buildings, not adding new ones.
That doesn't mean they're not growing. One condo tower permit in Montreal can represent 500 units. Permit counts aren't housing units. But the pattern is consistent enough to raise the question: is Canada's construction capacity going where the demand actually is?
Full data
All 12 cities
| City |
Total |
New |
Reno |
Ratio |
Methodology
Data from the BuildData API, which normalizes building permits from 17 Canadian municipal open data portals. Permits are classified into six types (new construction, renovation, addition, demolition, change of use, other) using keyword matching on permit type and work description fields. The ratio chart compares only permits classifiable as new construction or renovation.
Five cities excluded: Calgary and Vancouver (no renovation category in source data), Quebec City and Laval (new construction not surfaced), Regina (too few new permits).
The trend chart above was built from a single API call per city. Here's the query for Toronto:
GET /permit/stats?municipality=toronto
&group_by=permit_type_canonical
&period=1y
Returns new construction, renovation, addition, and demolition counts per year. Add municipality, permit_type, issued_after, issued_before, or q (full-text search) to slice further. 17 cities, updated daily, 100 free requests/day.
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