The National Permit Surge: A Cross-City Read on 2026
Across PropertyLabs’ 15 tracked Canadian cities, 43,174 permits were recorded and $12.5B in declared value logged between January 1 and July 19, 2026.
Permits tracked
43,174
All statuses across 15 Canadian cities
Total declared value
$12.5B
Where declared value is published
Average project value
$614K
Across the 20,428 permits with declared value
Tracking window
29 weeks
Jan 1 to Jul 19, 2026
Executive summary
Across the 15 Canadian cities in PropertyLabs’ tracked set, 43,174 permits were recorded between January 1 and July 19, 2026 — spanning the full pipeline from application through completion.
Where municipalities publish declared value, those permits carry $12.5B in construction value, an average of $614K per valued permit. Coverage is uneven: only 20,428 of the 43,174 tracked permits carry a declared value at all.
The window’s second half recorded far more permits than its first — 26,679 against 16,495 — on slightly lower total declared value ($6.0B versus $6.5B). That points to a wave driven by more, smaller permits rather than fewer, larger ones.
Key findings
Volume rose as value flattened
Second-half permit volume ran 62% above the first half (26,679 versus 16,495), yet second-half declared value came in 8% lower ($6.0B versus $6.5B).
Calgary set the weekly pace
Calgary led the tracked set in 16 of 29 weeks, ahead of Montreal (10 weeks) and Toronto (3). Toronto’s three wins all came in July, closing the window on a surge.
Value coverage is thin
Only 20,428 of 43,174 permits carry a declared value, so value totals understate true construction spend wherever municipalities omit the field.
July delivered the peak weeks
The two highest-volume weeks of the window fell in early July — 2,425 permits in the week of July 2 and 2,224 the week after — both led by Toronto.
Volume and value lead in different cities
Calgary, Montreal, and Winnipeg drive raw permit counts, while Vancouver ($3.9B) and Calgary ($3.2B) carry the largest declared-value totals.
Weekly permit count
Sampled weeks across the window. Final bar is a partial week ending July 19.
Geographic analysis
No single market held the lead all year. Calgary dominated the opening months, topping the tracked set in each of the first ten weeks, before Montreal took over through the spring on a high-volume, value-light permit stream. Toronto claimed the final three weeks of the window outright, peaking at 841 permits in the week of July 9.
The highest-volume weeks clustered in late May through mid-July, while the largest single project in the tracked set — a $200M, 13-storey long-term care facility at 750 W 32nd Avenue in Vancouver — reflects where declared value concentrates: Vancouver ($3.9B) and Calgary ($3.2B) lead the value table even as Montreal and Winnipeg lead on raw counts.
Highest-volume weeks of the period
Five highest-volume weeks in the tracked set.
| Week | Permits | Declared Value | Top City |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 2 – Jul 8 | 2,425 | $456.2M | Toronto (769) |
| May 28 – Jun 3 | 2,305 | $385.0M | Calgary (692) |
| Jul 9 – Jul 15 | 2,224 | $660.5M | Toronto (841) |
| Jun 11 – Jun 17 | 2,069 | $447.3M | Montreal (555) |
| Jun 4 – Jun 10 | 2,041 | $324.7M | Calgary (584) |
Second-half permit volume outran the first half by more than 60%, even as declared value slipped. The current wave is being built from more, smaller permits — not fewer, bigger ones.
Methodology
This report is built from PropertyLabs’ permit records for its 15 tracked Canadian cities, covering every permit recorded between January 1 and July 19, 2026, across all statuses — applications, reviews, issuances, and completions.
Top-city references identify whichever tracked city recorded the most permits in a given week, not a rank ordering of every permit market in Canada.
Declared value is applicant-reported at filing and is not published by every municipality; the average is computed only over the permits that carry a value. Where a municipality repeats a single master-project valuation across many sub-permits of one site, that valuation is counted once.
Sources and limitations
Source: PropertyLabs permit tracking export across 15 Canadian cities, extracted July 2026.
- Date field:
- Issued Date
- Rows in:
- 43,174 permits (all 15 cities, all statuses)
- After exclusions:
- 20,428 with a published declared value
- Date field:
- Issued Date
- Date field:
- Issue Date
- This is not a national census. It reflects only the 15 Canadian cities in PropertyLabs’ tracked set at the time of extraction.
- The final week is partial, ending July 19, and should not be read as a full-week total.
- Declared value is missing for more than half of tracked permits, so value totals are a floor, not a complete accounting.
Citation & provenance
- Publisher
- PropertyLabs Research
- Last updated
- July 2026
- Methodology
- Read the methodology
Suggested citation: PropertyLabs Research. "The National Permit Surge: A Cross-City Read on 2026." Updated July 2026. https://propertylabs.org/resources/national-permit-surge-2026
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