Toronto carries two real, differently dated 2024–2026 numbers that should not be blended into one story, a permitting stack with genuine sequencing steps before a site can start, and a Construction Act payment regime that changed on 1 January 2026. All of it applies before a crew ever reaches Windsor's different Ontario numbers two hours down the 401.
Market signals
BuildForce Canada's 2024 construction sector review records Toronto's 2024 construction employment down 8.1%, a loss of 18,300 jobs, largely tied to a weaker new-home construction market. That is a 2024 employment figure. BuildForce Canada, citing Statistics Canada building-permit data, published 24 March 2026 separately reports that Toronto's residential building-permit values fell 20% for the 12 months ending January 2026, against a 13% province-wide decline over the same window — a building-permit figure from a different, later period. Reading the 20% permit decline as a continuation of the 8.1% jobs figure, or vice versa, would blend two different measures from two different releases; this page keeps them separate, each dated to its own source.
Ontario's own guidance splits site preparation into distinct steps that a Toronto project moves through in sequence: Ontario's site plan control guide for the municipal approval that reviews layout, access and landscaping before a building permit issues; Ontario's brownfields redevelopment guidance for a Record of Site Condition where a property's history requires one; and Ontario's citizen's guide to land use planning, zoning by-laws section for the underlying zoning-bylaw framework a project must conform to or seek a variance from. None of these publish a Toronto-specific fee schedule this session carries a source for — the sequence itself, not a cost figure, is what this page can confirm.
Ontario's Construction Act held back 10% before this year and still does, but treadstonelaw.ca confirms the payer's option to defer annual holdback release ended on 1 January 2026: release is now mandatory on each contract anniversary. Prompt-payment day counts themselves are not independently confirmed by the regulator and should not be quoted as fixed numbers — see the Windsor page for the one place in this cluster those counts carry a genuine regulator hedge attached.
Ontario's file-a-work-notice guidance sets Ontario's Notice of Project threshold at $50,000 in expected labour-and-materials cost for most projects — a figure that is considerably lower than BC's equivalent $100,000 OHSR 20.2 trigger. A Toronto contractor moving between infill, mid-rise and high-rise product should expect to file notice on nearly every project of meaningful size, well before ground floor framing begins.
They are not directly comparable: employment fell 8.1% (18,300 jobs) in 2024, while residential permit values fell 20% for the 12 months ending January 2026 — a later, different measure. Both are real and sourced, but they describe different things.
No. Since 1 January 2026 it is mandatory on each contract anniversary; before that date it was the payer's option.
A 30-minute call is enough to see where AI flags a Notice of Project date or a holdback anniversary before it slips.
