RESCON committees are active and ready to respond

By Andrew Pariser

Apr. 6, 2026

While residential construction has always featured booms and busts, the last boom and the current bust have both set records.

First, the boom which topped in late 2021 and 2022 was one for the record books and combined with inflation to create an affordability crisis. The resulting bust in which high and low-rise sales have collapsed from the peak has also set records.

Looking at the numbers, high-rise peaked in 2021, with 32,000 units sold in the GTA. In low-rise, the peak was technically in 2015, but 2021 was a very close second with over 30,000 units being sold between the GTA and GGH.

Fast forward to 2025, high-rise recorded a 94-per-cent drop, with 2,067 sales, and low-rise dropped 85 per cent to 5,147 units between the GTA and GGH.

As the chair of RESCON’s health and safety committee, the training and education committee, and the Ontario Residential Council of Construction Associations, I’m going to write this month about the efforts of these three committees and how they have prepared themselves to deal with the challenges 2026 will hold.

Health and safety

While health and safety challenges change with the seasons and the business cycle, the commitment of RESCON members and the health and safety committee is constant. During the last boom, the committee led the way in dealing with the ever-changing COVID requirements and onboarding (training) of new workers to meet supply.

Add in our crane safety review, AED roll-out and seven Working for Workers bills and you start to understand how busy our health and safety professionals are and have been.

Looking forward, the health and safety committee is focused on elevator safety, legislative proposals related to WSIB, hardhats, the underground economy, and implementing the new AED requirements and training.

Training and education

BuildForce is currently holding industry consultations to finalize its 2026 labour market information forecasts. That job has never been tougher, as there has never been more uncertainty in the world.

A year ago, Trump tariffs and lingering inflation combined with high taxes, fees and levies to reduce the sales of residential units. This year we have added in high oil prices, more geopolitical risk on the downside but also witnessed two major government announcements which will support housing.

The first, which has been well documented for RESCON members, reduced the HST on first-time homebuyers (back dated to March 20, 2025) and all homebuyers (as of April 1, 2026). The second one tackled the longstanding issue of development charges. Both of these announcements are moving the needle in the right direction and will make a difference when it comes to residential construction.

The training and education committee and members have been engaged through the boom and bust, and are now optimistically planning for the recovery. We have continued to stay engaged with our labour partners at LiUNA as well as Ontario’s colleges, including but not limited to George Brown, Humber and Georgian colleges.

In addition, we have strong partnerships with Skills Ontario, BuildForce, Step to Construction and the BOLT Foundation. Whatever the future brings, the training and education committee will be there to lead the way.

ORCCA

Finally, ORCCA brings together the builders with residential and infrastructure related sub-trades and focuses on all issues related to labour relations. The primary focus of ORCCA is to prepare for bargaining and create an atmosphere for the exchange of information.

As we all know, 2025 was a bargaining year and residential, heavy-civil and ICI construction were able to negotiate new collective agreements with fewer strikes than previous rounds.

As with the other committees, ORCCA continues to meet and address legislative and other bargaining issues as they arise. ORCCA is also starting to prepare for the next round of bargaining which will commence in less than two years.

It is a pleasure to work on these three committees and with all RESCON members. Thank you to everyone for their ongoing efforts.