Tariffs Are Reshuffling the Lumber Market, and Builders Should Pay Attention
I have spent enough years around framing crews and lumber yards to know that wood pricing rarely moves for simple reasons. So when U.S. tariffs started squeezing Canadian exports, the ripple that followed was worth a second look. Less Canadian wood heading south means more of it staying home, and that shift is already showing up in the numbers.
During the pandemic, wood was one of the fastest climbing input costs on any job site I worked near. Framers watched quotes change week to week. After the tariffs landed, that volatility settled down considerably. Supply that used to flow to U.S. buyers is now more available domestically, and that has put some real downward pressure on price growth.
This matters most for ground-oriented housing, the townhomes and low-rise builds that lean heavily on wood, plastic, and composite materials. These are also the homes most young families and first-time buyers are chasing, and they have gotten harder to pencil out in recent years as material costs climbed. If cost growth in other Canadian centres had tracked what we saw in Vancouver and Montreal since 2019, construction costs on this housing type could be running as much as 17 percent lower in some markets. That is not a small number when you are trying to make a project work.
Where I think this gets genuinely interesting is mass timber. It is still uncommon on Canadian job sites compared to conventional framing, but the engineering has matured fast, and Sweden has already proven it can be scaled well beyond niche projects. Mass timber panels go up quickly, cut down on-site labour, and make use of exactly the kind of domestic wood supply that tariffs are now freeing up. For builders willing to learn a new system, that is an opportunity worth watching closely rather than dismissing as a trend piece.
None of this works without getting the material to where it needs to go, though. Industry stakeholders keep pointing to the same obstacle: Canada does not have the east-west transportation infrastructure to move domestic wood efficiently from forestry regions to the housing markets that need it most. The federal government’s Build Canada agenda, along with ongoing efforts to reduce internal trade barriers, could help close that gap. But infrastructure takes real coordination, not just good intentions on a policy page.
A stronger domestic market for Canadian wood products can support both increased homebuilding and a more resilient forestry industry.
My take from the job site side of things is straightforward. Builders should be paying attention to domestic lumber availability right now, and looking hard at mass timber where the project scope allows it. Trade policy is out of anyone’s hands here. What is in reach is smarter sourcing, and for once, that might actually work in favour of the people trying to get ground-oriented housing built.
Source: CMHC, “When served with tariff lemons, let’s make housing lemonade”
