Toronto is Canada's biggest construction market. Per capita, it's a very different story.

Toronto's construction market is enormous. It has the largest population among the 16 major Canadian markets tracked here, billions of dollars in residential construction activity, and more than 92,000 homes under construction.

But raw totals tell only part of the story.

Once construction activity is adjusted for population, Toronto looks much less dominant. Over the trailing 12 months ending June 2026, the Toronto census metropolitan area recorded 26,737 housing starts, equivalent to just 3.76 starts per 1,000 residents.

Calgary recorded 13.25 starts per 1,000 residents. Edmonton recorded 11.32. Vancouver recorded 8.72. Montréal recorded 6.20.

The difference illustrates why the largest construction market is not necessarily the most construction-intensive market.

Toronto's scale is hard to miss

Toronto had an estimated population of approximately 7.11 million in 2025, by far the largest population among the markets in this analysis.

During the trailing 12 months ending June 2026:

• residential building permit value totalled approximately $14.26 billion
• residential construction investment totalled approximately $30.06 billion
• 26,737 homes were started
• 28,391 homes were completed
• 92,217 dwelling units were under construction at the end of the period

Those are large numbers, and for businesses interested in absolute market volume, they matter.

A market capable of supporting tens of thousands of starts and completions and more than 90,000 units under construction represents a huge amount of construction activity.

But Toronto is also supporting more than seven million residents. Dividing construction activity by population changes the comparison substantially.

Toronto recorded 3.76 housing starts per 1,000 residents

Toronto's 26,737 housing starts work out to 3.76 starts per 1,000 residents.

Compare that with several other major Canadian markets:

This does not mean that Calgary or Moncton has a larger construction industry than Toronto. They do not.

It means new housing construction is occurring at a much higher rate relative to the size of their populations.

That distinction matters.

Raw totals answer questions such as:

Where is the greatest absolute volume of construction activity?

Per-capita measures answer a different question:

Where is construction activity most intense relative to the size of the market?

For comparing cities of dramatically different sizes, the second question can reveal patterns hidden by the first.

The construction pipeline tells a similar story

Toronto had 92,217 homes under construction at the end of June 2026.

In absolute terms, that is a substantial pipeline.

Relative to population, however, Toronto had approximately 12.97 units under construction per 1,000 residents.

Vancouver was at 19.40 per 1,000, while Halifax was at 26.46 per 1,000.

Again, this should not be interpreted as a forecast of future completions. Units under construction are a stock measure, and projects differ substantially in size and construction duration.

It does show that Toronto's enormous construction pipeline is less exceptional when viewed relative to the population it serves.

Completions are also modest relative to population

Toronto completed 28,391 homes over the same trailing 12-month period.

That equals approximately 3.99 completions per 1,000 residents.

For comparison:

• Moncton: 15.97 completions per 1,000
• Calgary: 14.10
• Edmonton: 11.01
• Vancouver: 9.54
• Montréal: 5.23
• Toronto: 3.99

The gap is substantial.

This is one reason raw construction totals should be treated carefully when comparing Canadian markets. Toronto can produce far more housing than many smaller cities while still producing relatively little housing for each 1,000 people already living in the region.

Toronto's residential permit activity has also weakened

The latest permit data adds another dimension.

Toronto recorded approximately $14.26 billion in residential building permit value over the trailing 12 months ending June 2026, but that was 11.7% lower than the preceding 12-month period.

After adjusting for construction prices, the decline was approximately 12.6%.

That distinction is important because changes in permit values can reflect both changes in construction activity and changes in construction prices. In Toronto's case, the price adjustment does not reverse the signal: residential permit value declined in both nominal and constant-dollar terms.

Residential construction investment also declined approximately 9.0% over the period.

These figures describe current and recent market conditions. They should not be read as a long-term forecast for Toronto construction.

Toronto is not weak — it is enormous and different

It would be easy to look at Toronto's per-capita numbers and conclude that the market is simply "weak."

That would be an oversimplification.

Toronto remains an exceptionally large construction market. Absolute volume matters to manufacturers, distributors, contractors, developers and other businesses whose opportunity depends on the total amount of construction occurring in a region.

But scale and intensity are not the same thing.

A supplier deciding where the largest pool of current construction activity exists may care heavily about Toronto's absolute volume.

Someone comparing the pace of housing construction across Canadian cities may care much more about starts, completions or units under construction per 1,000 residents.

Both views are valid. They answer different questions.

Why population-adjusted construction metrics matter

Canadian metropolitan areas vary enormously in size.

Toronto has more than seven million residents. Moncton has only a fraction of that population. Comparing their raw housing-start totals alone tells us mostly that Toronto is much larger.

Normalizing by population makes it possible to compare the rate of construction activity instead.

This pattern appears throughout the construction data.

Across the 16 markets studied, raw residential permit value is extremely strongly related to population size. Residential construction investment and the raw number of units under construction show the same problem: large cities naturally tend to produce large totals.

Normalizing by population changes the comparison substantially. It reduces the influence of market size and makes differences in construction intensity easier to see. Markets that dominate in absolute construction volume do not necessarily rank highly when activity is measured relative to population.

That does not make raw totals useless. It means the two types of measures should be used together.

The takeaway

Toronto remains Canada's dominant construction market by sheer scale, but it is not leading the country in the rate of new housing construction relative to population.

For the trailing 12 months ending June 2026:

• Housing starts: 26,737, or 3.76 per 1,000 residents
• Completions: 28,391, or 3.99 per 1,000
• Units under construction: 92,217, or 12.97 per 1,000
• Residential permit value: approximately $14.26 billion, down 11.7% nominally
• Constant-dollar residential permit growth: approximately -12.6%
• Residential construction investment: approximately $30.06 billion, down 9.0%

Toronto's raw numbers describe an enormous market.

Its population-adjusted numbers describe something different: a market where current housing construction activity is relatively modest compared with several faster-building Canadian metropolitan areas.

Understanding both views is more useful than asking which city is simply "biggest."

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About the data

Figures are based on official Statistics Canada and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data compiled by Canadian Construction Market Intelligence. Unless otherwise stated, flow measures use the trailing 12 months ending June 2026. Population-normalized measures use the 2025 population estimate.

Permit values are shown in both nominal and price-adjusted terms where available. Units under construction are a point-in-time stock and should not be interpreted as a matched-project forecast of future completions.

Explore the Toronto construction market

See housing starts rankings

Compare Calgary and Toronto using the current published data

Read the methodology