Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Canadian imports and governments’ response to them will have “severe repercussions” for Ontario’s housing sector.
The warning from the Ontario Home Builders’ Association (OHBA) Tuesday comes as the U.S. president finally followed through on his threat to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian and Mexican imports. Canadian energy was hit with a lower, 10 per cent levy. Meanwhile, China was slapped with a 10 per cent tariff.
Ottawa and the provinces have vowed a strong response: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has said it will impose tariffs on $30 billion worth of U.S. goods immediately, and further tariffs on $125 billion worth of American products 21 days later.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford reiterated Monday that he is prepared to follow through with previously announced measures, including ripping up a $100-million deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX for Starlink internet in remote areas. The LCBO would also be ordered to remove U.S. alcohol from its shelves, and its website was temporarily down Tuesday morning as it was removing those products for online shoppers.
Furthermore, Ford said he could legislate Buy Ontario, and went on U.S. television threatening to cut off energy to some states if tariffs hit. His team has said those threats wouldn’t happen all at once, and would be phased in.
The OHBA said Tuesday that just the threat of tariffs over the past few months has created “considerable uncertainty and hurt the industry.” Now that they have been implemented, and the Canadian response is coming, these measures will be “effectively pulling the rug out” from under the housing sector.
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“I spoke to a builder recently who sold two houses in all of 2024. The market is already in a bad place, and there’s no saying how bad the fallout from this additional threat will be,” Scott Andison, CEO of OHBA, said in a news release.
“Builders across the province are struggling to survive, and this unwarranted act of economic aggression is going to be even more devastating for them.”
Richard Lyall, president of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, echoed the OHBA’s concerns.
“The residential construction industry on both sides of the border is already in dire straits due to a perfect storm of issues and this completely unwarranted and reckless act will only cause more economic hardship for builders on both sides of the border. The U.S. National Association of Home Builders shares our view that tariffs and affordability are bad on both sides of the border,” Lyall said in a statement.
“Tariffs will make it more costly for building materials and, in the end, the costs of these unnecessary levies will be passed on to consumers. This will lead to a further slowdown in residential construction activity and exacerbate our already dire housing affordability crisis.
In 2022, Ontario announced it planned to build 1.5 million new homes by 2031. To hit that goal, it needed an average of 150,000 new housing starts every year.
In the fall, Ontario’s financial watchdog poured cold water on those numbers, signalling in a report that construction continues to stall and the number of new single-family homes was at its lowest in almost 70 years.
Fresh off another election win, Ford’s Progressive Conservatives promised during their snap election campaign that they would put $50 million toward supporting more factory-built homes and innovative home-building technology.
The party also said it would appoint a permitting and approvals czar, and implement a provincewide tool to accelerate land-use planning and Building Code permit approvals.
The OHBA said it will work with Queen’s Park to minimize the impact of these tariffs.
“However, the potential exists for the impact of tariffs on housing to be devastating,” it said.
— with files from Isaac Callan and Colin D’Mello
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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