In national news, 40% of construction experts surveyed expect construction activity to grow in Canada in 2022 despite headwinds caused by volatile supply and inflated cost with respect to materials and labour. Infrastructure and private housing are both expected to be strong growth sectors.
In Ontario, residential construction lobby groups have voiced enthusiastic approval of a recently-published Housing Affordability Task Force report that calls for, among other measures, significant relaxation of restrictive single-family zoning. The report’s recommendations may enable the construction of as many as 1.5 million homes in Ontario in the next decade, which the task force believes is necessary in order to close the gap between Ontario’s population-to-housing ratio and that of the rest of the G7, in comparison to whose average Ontario is currently 1.2 million homes short.
In Alberta, Calgary-based Graham Group has completed the purchase of the North American assets of AECOM’s energy operations and maintenance divisions, making Graham the largest construction company in Western Canada and the third-largest in the country.