Canada province and city move to block US builders and contractors

Construction site in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Image: Adobe Stock)

On 4 March, Ontario Province Premier Doug Ford announced his region’s response to the Trump administration’s rising tariffs, which included talk of a ban on US construction firms building within Canada’s borders.

Local news reports said the premier plans to block American companies from bidding on the roughly US$21-billion-worth of procurement contracts Ontario awards each year. It would also prevent US firms from bidding on contracts related to a $140-billion infrastructure plan for transit, hospitals and jails.

Ford said, “US-based businesses will now lose out on tens-of-billions of dollars in revenues. They only have President Trump to blame.”

On 6 March, the mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow, announced her plans to exclude US firms from smaller builds. Only Canadian businesses will be awarded contracts less than CA$353,000 (US$247,000), but Chow said, in the future, larger contracts may also be subject to the US ban. Toronto is the country’s largest city with about 2.8 million people. It is located less than 100 road-miles from the US border.

According to a news report, US construction firms won more than $146 million in the last two years in Toronto, which represents about 10% of all work since December 2022.

But will US construction really “lose out”?

Still, it’s unclear how much pain Ontario’s ban could cause US construction firms, which will still have ample work on which to bid at home. 

One of the US’ largest contractors, Tutor Perini, told Construction Briefing that Ontario’s moves won’t factor into its business decisions.

“This will have no impact on Tutor Perini business,” a company spokesperson said, noting the firm does an “insignificant amount of work” in the province. 

Other large US-based contractors are also as unlikely to be negatively impacted, especially those with global footprints and regional subsidiaries.

One example is Turner Construction; one of the US’ largest construction contractors. Turner also told Construction Briefing the ban in Ontario should have almost no impact on operations.

Although Turner is based in New York, it’s a subsidiary of German-owned Hochtief, which is a subsidiary of Spain-based ACS Group. Turner also operates a Canada-based regional affiliate (Canadian Turner Construction Company). Ultimately, it would depend on Ontario’s definition of ‘US construction companies’ to determine if Turner’s Canadian affiliate is elligible for work within the province. 

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