Member resource Wave 1 — before Sept 8, 2026

Tariffs, your business, and one survey that can't be answered from public data

Which tariff measures reach which divisions of work, what's in force on both sides of the border — and a five-to-fifteen-minute survey LDCA is using to tell government what's actually happening to members, before and after September 8.

Take the survey Jump to tariff context

Current as at August 26, 2026 · LDCA-GOV-TAR-001

Buying

A Canadian duty on what you import

Canada's counter-tariff, from September 8, on U.S.-origin goods entering Canada. The only category that puts a duty on your own customs entry.

Selling

A U.S. duty on what you export

American duties on Canadian goods don't raise your input cost — they shrink your order book and compress margin on what you ship south.

Indirect

A duty on someone else in your chain

Moves the market price of something you buy, without being a duty you pay. Real, harder to trace, easily mistaken for the first category.

LDCA Tariff Impact Survey — Wave 1

Purpose. LDCA is preparing an economic assessment of what these tariffs do to construction, for submission to government. No published data source records what your suppliers are quoting or what your contractors are asking for — so we're asking you. This sets a baseline before September 8; a short follow-up goes out two to four weeks after, using the same fields, so expected and actual effects are never reported as the same thing.

Confidentiality. Responses are aggregated. No firm is named, and no individual response is shared with any other member, with government, or with anyone outside LDCA staff. Results are reported only in groups large enough that no single firm can be identified.

Not legal advice. This survey and any LDCA material on contract matters is general information only. Please contact your own lawyer for advice on your situation.

Open to members of any Ontario construction association 10–15 minutes, less if you're brief Every question is optional

Which describes you?

Tick exactly one. This decides which questions you answer — if you both provide and purchase construction services, choose "Both" and you'll get both sets.

We provide

Construction services, materials, or equipment — contractor, trade, fabricator, supplier, or consultant.

We purchase

Construction services — owner, developer, public body, or property manager.

Both

We both provide and purchase construction services — you'll answer both branches below.

About your organisation

Organisation name

Optional — used only to avoid double-counting, and separated from your answers before analysis.

Contact name and email

Optional, in case we need to clarify an answer.

P1. Which best describes your organisation?

P2. Which construction association(s) are you a member of?

Mark all that apply. LDCA welcomes responses from members of other associations, so results can be reported by region.

London & District Construction Association (LDCA) Windsor Construction Association (WCA) Grand Valley Construction Association (GVCA) Niagara Construction Association (NCA) Kingston Construction Association (KCA) Ottawa Construction Association Northern Ontario Construction Association (NOCA) Not a member of any construction association

P3. Where do you do most of your work?

P4. What kind of work is most of your volume?

P5. Annual spend on materials, equipment & contracts

Read as procurement spend if you provide services, or capital spend if you purchase.

If you provide construction services, materials, or equipment

Sourcing

S1. Share of material/equipment spend bought directly from American suppliers

S2. Share you believe is American in origin but bought through a Canadian distributor

S3. Does your firm file the customs entry — are you the importer of record?

Access to duty relief generally depends on being the importer, and the rules differ by mechanism. Ask your customs broker which applies to you.

Price signals

S4. Advance warnings of a tariff-attributed increase, received since August 22

S5. Increases that have actually appeared on an invoice

S6. Has any supplier said a price holds only while pre-tariff stock lasts?

If prices are held on old inventory, we need to know roughly how long that cushion lasts — the difference between a cost increase arriving in September or November.

Roughly how long?

S7. One documented price change — the question we need most

We are not asking for your prices. No dollar figures, no supplier name, no customer name — just the percentage change between two dated quotations for the same thing, so we can tie a movement to a specific tariff measure. A generic product description is fine ("galvanized steel stud"); a brand and part number tells us nothing more. Example 1 is enough — two more are welcome.

Field	Example 1	Example 2 (optional)	Example 3 (optional)
Product or category (generic is fine)
Date of earlier quotation
Date of later quotation
Percentage change
Or a band
Same spec & quantity?
Supplier said a tariff caused it?

Secondary & optional: largest percentage increase seen on anything

…on what

S8. Which categories have been affected?

Mark all that apply.

Your contracts

Not legal advice. These ask what your contracts say and what happened — we're not asking for a legal conclusion.

S9. Do you hold work where the price was committed — at bid closing or by quotation — before the tariff change that affects it?

S10. Do those contracts contain a taxes/duties, escalation, or change-in-law mechanism?

S11. Have you asked an owner for an adjustment under such a provision, and what happened?

S12. Approximate value of affected materials/equipment still to be bought on work already committed

If you can estimate it, the incremental cost you expect not to recover:

CAD amount

or per cent of contract value

S13. Have you found a Canadian or non-American alternative for an affected item?

If higher, roughly how much higher (per cent)

On what

S14. How you've changed your bidding since August 22

Mark all that apply.

No change to how I bid Added a contingency amount to the price

Roughly:

Added or proposed an escalation or change-in-law provision

Owner response:

Shortened the period my price stays open

Now valid for how many days:

Tried to add a provision and the tender documents did not permit it Declined to bid rather than carry the risk

S15. Roughly what share of your revenue comes from customers in the United States?

American duties on Canadian goods don't raise your input cost — they affect your order book and margin. We need to know who's exposed that way.

Projects, schedule, and anything else

C1. Projects deferred/cancelled where the owner explicitly cited tariffs or cost uncertainty

C2. Projects deferred/cancelled where you believe tariffs contributed but it wasn't stated

C3. Has the lead time on any affected item extended, and by roughly how long?

C4. Anything else LDCA should know?

Including anything the questions above missed, and any effect on work you sell into the United States.

Prefer to answer by phone, or return the paper version instead? Contact the LDCA office and we'll fill it in together, or send you the document by email.

What's in force, in brief

LDCA's full reference page covers every measure at the tariff-line level. Here's the working summary — expand any section for detail.

What Canada applies on September 8

▾

Rates of 15, 25, and 50 per cent on roughly 700 categories of American goods, covering about CAD 27.6 billion of imports. Each product's rate matches the American rate on the equivalent Canadian good.
Many covered steel and aluminum items rise to 50 per cent, up from the 25 per cent counter-tariff in place since March 2025. Classification and country of origin — not the material name — determine the rate.
Named sectors: steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, plastics, electronics, furniture, and apparel.
Origin is set by CUSMA marking rules, not by where you bought it. Buying from a Canadian distributor doesn't by itself take a U.S.-origin product outside the measure.
Goods already in transit on September 8 are not caught. Remission may be available — ask your customs broker before your next shipment, since applying it at entry beats a refund claim that takes months.

Source: Finance Canada, product list effective 8 September 2026 and announcement of 25 August 2026.

What the United States applies on Canadian goods

▾

American duties reduce Canadian export demand and compress margin on cross-border sales — they do not raise a Canadian buyer's input cost directly, though they can move prices indirectly by redirecting product that can no longer be sold south.

Measures include Section 232 metals adjustments (steel, aluminum, copper), Section 338 proclamations, and a Section 301 notice of action. Full citations are in the sources list below.

Which divisions of work are reached

▾

This is a sample, not the full table — the complete division-by-division mapping is on LDCA's full reference page.

Division	What's affected	Measure	Direction
05 — Metals	Structural steel, rebar, steel deck, misc. metals fabrications	Canada, covered steel items	Buying
08 — Openings	Hollow metal doors/frames, aluminum windows, curtain wall	Canada, covered steel & aluminum	Buying
21, 22, 23 — Fire, Plumbing, HVAC	Copper tube, fittings, HVAC equipment with metal content	U.S. Section 232 on copper	Indirect
26 — Electrical	Switchgear, panels, controls, low-voltage devices	Canada, electronics named as covered	Buying
31, 32, 33 — Sitework & Utilities	Steel piling, sheeting, culvert, water main, guide rail	Canada, covered steel items	Buying

What this table is not. It does not give a percentage cost impact by division — that requires mapping every tariff item onto divisions and estimating what suppliers actually pass through. That work is underway. Anyone quoting a per-division percentage today, including LDCA, would be guessing.

Six things worth doing this week

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Work at the product line, not the category. "Steel" isn't a useful unit — a classification number and a country of origin is.
Get dated written quotations before September 8. A dated quotation is the cleanest evidence of what a material cost beforehand.
Ask about in-transit and remission, before your next shipment — both are conversations with your customs broker, and both have deadlines.
Read your contract before you need to. CCDC 2–2020 GC 10.1 addresses taxes and duties; the timing that matters is bid closing, not the date you signed.
Check what flows down. If the prime contract carries change-in-law protection your subcontract doesn't, that risk has been handed to you.
Price the risk on bids not yet submitted — and tell LDCA if the tender documents won't let you. That's the evidence LDCA needs to push for mandatory tariff-escalation provisions in public tenders.

Sources & further reading

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Not legal or customs advice. This page is general information about a fast-moving situation. It cannot tell you what a specific shipment pays. Take advice on your own contracts and classifications. Contact the LDCA office if a supplier notice or tender clause is causing a specific problem — individual member information is held in confidence and used only in aggregate.

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