U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats cast a dark shadow over the recent Ontario Construction Secretariat (OCS) conference but not all the news was negative.
BuildForce Canada’s senior economist Bob Collins outlined a robust pipeline of Ontario projects stretching out over five years during his presentation on workforce needs, with hundreds of billions earmarked for public and private projects in the transit, health care, power, transportation, industrial and other institutional sectors.
Collins said the agency has determined there is approximately $200 billion in major ICI projects underway or scheduled to start in the province in the next five years.
Collins told delegates attending the OCS’s State of the Industry and Outlook Conference there was hesitation on the private project investment side even before the implications of the tariff threats began to be realized, including in the EV and battery sector. The next year will be fraught with uncertainty for that subset of projects, he said.
“This is unfolding in front of our eyes on a daily basis,” said Collins.
“Take note, because that’s the world we’re going to live in for the next six to eight months.”
OCS CEO Brian Barron said the takeaway is that there’s lots of confirmed work amidst the uncertainty.
“The positive message is, there is a lot of public projects in the pipeline that are helping to drive the industry,” he said. “In a period where we may see a bit of a slowdown or postponement of some of the private projects, there is still all of this public work that’s happening, roads, bridges, hospitals, light rail transit.
“So it’s not all doom and gloom.”
BuildForce spoke to project owners and investors beginning last November to develop its forecast.
Many of the projects will reach peak activity in 2027, with investment to recede into 2030.
Collins said BuildForce’s focus was on Ontario’s ICI sector but noted that residential investment and labour demand will continue to be slow in 2025. It’s expected to return to growth in 2026 and then projected to rise slowly across the forecast period. Pent-up demand, easing interest rates and a growing population will help drive market gains in that sector, Collins said.
Engineering construction is expected to dominate non-residential construction, says BuildForce.
Five-year highlights in Ontario include:
- $48 billion in transit projects in the GTA, central and eastern regions
- $35 billion in power generation including nuclear refurbishment projects in the GTA and southwest regions, and small modular reactor (SMR) technology in the GTA
- $5 billion in mining projects in northern Ontario
- $8 billion in water and wastewater projects across the province
- $7 billion for roads, highways and bridges.
“There’s just a ton of transit,” said Collins, noting significant work for multiple trades including boilermakers and millwrights. “That’s a multi-layered project that keeps on giving. You’ve got the tunnelling at the front end. You got all the track stuff, then the stations.”
Investment in ICI buildings will include $30 billion for health care projects, $14 billion for other institutional buildings and $30 billion for industrial buildings with the largest demand driven by auto retooling and EV battery facilities.
BuildForce is also tracking other megaprojects not included on the list requiring further confirmation such as a final investment decision. These include OPG’s additional SMRs, OPG Pickering Nuclear Refurbishment, CNL Chalk River SMR, Bruce Power New Nuclear, TC Energy’s Meaford Pump Storage Hydroelectric Facility, $21 billion in Battery Energy Storage Systems and $20 billion more in mining.
“I did some sneak peeks in terms of some of the big investment projects and some of the mining projects north, and it started to show up,” said Collins of the hesitancy some investors are feeling. “I am starting to see dates that we were tracking that might have been a 2027 start, but it’s now 2028 or ’29 or pushed right out to 2030.”
Other economists at the conference suggested governments might engage in stimulus spending on projects if there is softening on the private investment side due to tariffs. Collins said another source of project spending will be industrial maintenance, with some firms upgrading or retrofitting plants.
He said, “They are not going to do expansion, but want to make sure everything is running.”
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