By Tom Parkin
September 24, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Ontario’s residential construction sector is small and getting smaller, but sector unions appear reluctant to publicly raise concerns as the Ford government weaponizes a key grant program.
Ontario’s shrunken residential construction industry
Employment in residential construction per 100,000 population
Kick-starting Ontario’s residential construction sector to build thousands of much-needed new homes could create up to 30,000 jobs, an analysis of Statistics Canada jobs data shows.
Just 57,600 workers were employed in Ontario’s residential construction sector this June, according to StatCan’s survey of employment by industry. In other provinces with better housing results, employment is much higher.
Residential construction: small and getting smaller
Residential construction employs a smaller percentage of workers in Ontario than any other province except Saskatchewan. For every 100,000 employed workers, Ontario residential construction generates just 700 jobs compared to 913 in Quebec and 1,055 in British Columbia.
An Ontario home-building strategy that developed a sector as robust as in B.C. would add over 29,200 badly-needed jobs building badly-needed housing. At Quebec levels, Ontario would have about 17,500 more jobs. Over 800,000 Ontario workers were unemployed in August.
But Ontario housing construction has gone from bad to worse. In August, only 5,100 housing units were started in Ontario, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. That result falls far short of the 12,500 starts per month the PCs in 2021 promised their policies would deliver.
The PCs’ housing flame-out has become a big jobs killer, making Ontario’s small sector even smaller. Employment is down almost 10 per cent in two years.
In June 2025 there were 6,100 fewer jobs in the sector than June 2023 when almost 64,000 Ontarians were employed in residential construction.
Lack of building also affects jobs outside the construction sector, particularly in forestry, which is heavily reliant on providing lumber to homebuilders. But other sectors, like utilities, are also affected.
Employment in Ontario residential construction, Jan 2018-Jun 2025
Unions quiet on jobs as PCs weaponize key training fund
Despite the job losses, significant unions in the sector appear to be self-censoring their concerns as the Ford government politicizes the Skills Development Fund (SDF) that union apprenticeship programs depend on.
The SDF has come under scrutiny after news reports of PC political meddling and grants going to private companies with a history of PC Party support. The Auditor-General has opened an investigation into the Fund.
A $17 million grant to Scale Hospitality was approved after the political intervention of an assistant to Ontario Premier Doug Ford and despite their application being submitted after the deadline and receiving a low score from bureaucrats. The assistant has since left Ford’s office, setting up a lobby firm that was then paid by Scale Hospitality.
Scale Hospitality proposed to train workers for several swanky downtown Toronto restaurants including some owned by significant PC Party donors. The $17 million project trained only 5,300 workers, according to the Ministry of Labour.
The Fund also supplied about $9 million to Canadian Niagara Hotels, whose CEO, Dino DiCienzo, has also been a generous PC Party donor. The grants raised the ire of instructors at Niagara College, which has been forced to cancel hospitality training due to Ford’s cuts to colleges. Their union, OPSEU, has publicly raised concerns the training grants to private companies are undermining the very stressed college system.
SDF cash has also gone to other private companies whose owners have deep PC Party connections.
Unions in the building and construction sector have for many years been large recipients of SDF money to operate their apprenticeship and skills programs. But the SDF’s recent politicization now puts all grant recipients at risk of political threat or manipulation by the PCs.
After OPSEU raised concern about the government’s use of SDF money to help PC campaign donors, the Labourer’s Union last week distanced itself from the criticisms, pulling out of the Ontario Federation of Labour and saying it was “nothing but bad politics” to attack the Ford government or the SDF.
Tom Parkin is a social democratic columnist and commentator based in Toronto
He can be reached at: tparkin@impact-strategies.ca
