Canada Permits publishes municipal and metro building-permit readings from Statistics Canada's Monthly Survey of Building Permits (SDDS 2802), principally Table 34-10-0292-01. Named datasets: data sources.

Coverage

The atlas tracks 42 municipalities (42 direct, 0 regional proxy). The federal survey covers a near-census of permit-issuing municipalities (on the order of 2,400 offices; about 95% of the population). Participation is mandatory for offices in the survey frame.

What permits measure

Construction intentions at authorization: nominal permit value, new dwelling units where published, type of structure (residential / industrial / commercial / institutional), and type of work (new construction, alterations, conversions, demolitions). Not starts, not completions, not dollars actually spent, not construction-cost-adjusted investment.

Relationship to CMHC

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Starts and Completions Survey sits downstream: authorization (StatCan) → start (CMHC) → completion (CMHC). Pair permit value with CMHC starts over a twelve-month window before judging housing-supply adequacy. Municipal open-data portals (Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, and others) update faster locally but are not the national comparison frame.

Ingest and revisions

Pipelines download Table 34-10-0292-01, map CMA and related geography codes to the seed city list, and refresh after the federal monthly release (typically about six weeks after the reference month). Late reports may be imputed then revised; prior months commonly revise for about two months, with annual revisions reaching further back. Unadjusted monthly values sum cleanly to calendar years for rankings.

Data tiers

• Direct. A municipal or CMA breakout is available for that geography.
• Regional. The enclosing CMA or agglomeration is used and labeled. Regional proxies misstate any single municipality when growth is concentrated elsewhere in the metro.

Reading rules

Prefer multi-month or calendar-year totals; split residential vs non-residential. Prefer new dwelling units for housing-supply conversations; total value for capital-spend conversations. Single-month spikes often reflect one large project. Nominal value rises with construction costs even when unit counts are flat. Primer: How to Read Canadian Building Permit Data.

Using a city page

Use year-over-year value and residential units together: value for how much construction is authorized, units for housing supply. Prefer multi-month totals over one loud month, note whether the geography is direct or a metro proxy, and check CMHC starts when you need homes underway rather than permits alone.