Stalled Growth: How Trade Gridlock Threatens Housing and Infrastructure

Ontario Line construction in Ward 14. Priced before August 21st.

⭐ Housing targets are meaningless if the economics no longer work.

Tariffs, construction costs, financing and municipal charges can make approved housing financially impossible to build, especially smaller infill, rental and gentle-density projects.

⭐ Housing requires infrastructure, not just zoning.

Adding density means adding capacity for water, sewers, electricity, transit, schools, healthcare, parks and other services. Municipalities cannot carry those long-term costs alone while senior governments focus primarily on housing-unit targets.

⭐ Protecting employment land is now an economic-security issue.

Canada needs domestic manufacturing, construction supply chains and good jobs, particularly during a trade dispute. Converting industrial and employment land to housing may create residential capacity today while eliminating the land we need to build the materials, businesses and jobs that make those communities viable tomorrow.

Canada is facing a compounding housing and infrastructure crisis.

Senior governments announce ambitious housing targets, demand faster municipal approvals, offer grants, and expect municipalities to secure land and support the long-term infrastructure that accompanies growth.

At the same time, we are in a trade dispute with our largest trading partner.

Canada’s counter-tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum remain in effect while negotiations continue. The United States also continues to impose tariffs in these sectors. Whatever your position on the trade dispute, there is a basic economic reality we cannot ignore: rising construction material costs make it harder to build housing and infrastructure.

Toronto housing starts were down again in July. There are many reasons projects are not moving forward, including financing, construction costs, market conditions, and land costs. Tariffs add another cost to projects already struggling to make the numbers work.

The grants and approval of a project do not mean shovels in the ground.

When steel, aluminum, rebar and other construction inputs become more expensive, financing becomes harder and marginal projects become less viable. That matters for large developments, but it matters enormously for the smaller housing projects Toronto says it wants.

Toronto has already done the work to show us the opportunity. Planning estimates approximately 47,500 potential laneway suites and 165,000 potential garden suites across Toronto. Its modelling estimates that the City’s broader neighbourhood intensification policies, including laneway suites, garden suites, multiplexes and development along major streets, could produce about 164,000 additional homes by 2051.

That is significant housing capacity without relying exclusively on towers. But permission to build is not the same as the ability to build.

A homeowner considering a laneway house or garden suite still has to finance excavation, concrete, lumber, steel, electrical, plumbing, mechanical systems and labour. There is a point where the numbers simply stop working.

We can change the zoning on hundreds of thousands of properties, but if people cannot afford to build the housing we have permitted, we have not solved the problem.

Municipalities are caught in the same economics.

Water and sewer systems, transit, bridges, electrical infrastructure and other capital projects require many of the same materials. When those inputs become more expensive, the same municipal dollar buys less infrastructure.

We are asking cities to build more of it. Filling out surveys asking potential councillors how we will get it done.

More housing requires more water capacity, more power, more transit, more schools, more healthcare, more parks and more community infrastructure. Growth has capital costs and long-term operating costs. Those costs do not disappear because another level of government announces a housing target and funds amenity contributions.

They land here, in our cities and in our wards.

But there is an even bigger contradiction in the way we are responding to the trade crisis.

We are being told Canada needs to become more economically resilient. We need stronger domestic supply chains. We need to manufacture more of what we use here rather than relying so heavily on imports.

I agree.

Where are we going to put it?

At the same time we are discussing reshoring production, Toronto continues to face pressure to convert employment lands to other uses. As of July 2026, the City reported 47 site-specific applications seeking to redesignate land within Employment Areas, along with 10 active appeals seeking employment-land conversions or removals.

Those lands matter.

Manufacturing, fabrication, warehousing and logistics need physical space. They need power. They need transportation connections. They need places where trucks and equipment can operate without conflicting with residential neighbourhoods.

Toronto’s own Official Plan recognizes this. It says Employment Areas must retain sufficient land for current and future industrial functions, including manufacturing and warehousing.

That is not outdated planning. In the middle of a trade dispute, it is economic resilience. We cannot reshore a supply chain onto land we already rezoned for condos.

There is nothing wrong with building condos. We desperately need housing. But housing and employment land are not interchangeable pieces on a planning map.

If we build thousands of homes while pushing the businesses that manufacture, repair, fabricate, distribute and move things farther outside the city, we create another problem. We increase transportation distances, make businesses more dependent on highways and trucks, and separate employment from the communities where people live. Then we wonder why congestion gets worse.

This is why housing policy cannot just be about zoning.

Zoning matters. Faster approvals matter. Multiplexes, laneway homes, garden suites, co-ops, rental housing and apartments all need to be part of the solution.

But zoning is permission. Building requires an economy.

It requires materials, skilled labour, financing, industrial capacity, land, transportation, water and power.

Senior governments need to negotiate stable trade relationships. Tit-for-tat tariffs may be a negotiating tool, but they come with real domestic costs. Those costs need to be understood as we simultaneously ask the country to undertake one of the largest housing and infrastructure expansions in its history.

Municipalities also need to protect strategic employment lands. Not every industrial parcel should become residential simply because residential development may command a higher land value today. Some land has to be protected for what our economy will need tomorrow.

Governments need to start looking at housing, infrastructure, trade and economic development as one system. Because they are one system.

You cannot demand more housing without considering the water and electricity required to serve it.

You cannot build that infrastructure without thinking about the materials required to construct it.

You cannot respond to tariffs by calling for Canadian manufacturing while eliminating the land where manufacturing can happen, which happens at our city level. And you cannot measure success by the number of homes Toronto has zoned for if nobody can afford to build them.

Housing is not built with announcements.

It is built with materials, skilled labour, land, infrastructure and capital. If we are serious about building more homes, we need to plan for it all.