Advanced Wood Construction Action Plan

Sustainable Growth: Ontario’s Forest Sector Strategy (Forest Sector Strategy) is being implemented to sustainably grow the forest sector, therefore creating opportunity and prosperity for thousands of Ontario families, while encouraging innovation and investment in the industry.

Through the Forest Sector Strategy, Ontario is acting to increase the use of wood in construction. This Advanced Wood Construction Action Plan provides a framework to guide these efforts and encourage the use of innovative wood building products and systems beyond the traditional site-built construction used in most single-family homes.

Advanced wood construction can build larger and taller buildings than conventional wood construction and be used in a broad scope of applications including multifamily residential, institutional, commercial and educational buildings, as well as infrastructure like bridges and towers. The prefabricated nature of advanced wood construction allows for 50% faster construction at up to 20% less cost.  It also results in less waste, a low carbon footprint, and high quality, durable products.  This will contribute to building the housing that is needed in Ontario, while driving economic prosperity and supporting workforce development in the province.

Enhanced construction practices are enabling buildings across Canada that are resilient to the impacts of climate change while locking in absorbed carbon. The buildings sector is thought to account for up to 39% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Innovative building materials, including mass timber, are helping to drive down emissions in the buildings sector while adding value to our forest resources, bolstering the economy and creating good jobs across the provincial supply chain – including in sustainable forestry.

Advanced Wood Construction Advantage

Advanced wood construction is recognized globally as a construction industry disruptor that is being adopted at a faster pace than any other building system in history (Forest Economics Advisors, 2022).  By spurring the increased use of advanced wood construction, Ontario seizes the opportunity to use its abundant and sustainable forest resources to position itself as a leader in this innovative and exciting sector of manufacturing and construction.

Advanced Wood Construction Supply Chain

Wood fiber is sourced from sustainably managed public forests as well as private land forests. Annually, in Ontario, less than 0.5% of public forests are harvested and Ontario is using only half of its sustainable annual harvest.

Advanced wood construction producers use this sustainable wood fibre and add value to it to produce wood building components and assemblies. These prefabricated components are ready to be delivered directly to the construction site for just-in-time installation.

Objectives and Actions

The Advanced Wood Construction Action Plan has been developed to support three overarching goals: 

1. Increase the use of Ontario wood and grow wood’s market share in construction
2. Establish Ontario as a leader in advanced wood construction manufacturing and expertise, and
3. Encourage the use of sustainable materials in infrastructure.

The action plan centers around four objectives, each of which have a set of actions to be pursued over the five-year term of the plan.

Objective 1: Support Promotion, Education and Training Initiatives

Objective 2 Spur Research and the Advancement of Codes, Standards and Regulations

Objective 3:Stimulate Innovation and Advanced Manufacturing

Objective 4: Demonstrate and Display Advanced Wood Construction

The Road Ahead

The implementation of an Advanced Wood Construction Action Plan will help achieve the vision in Ontario’s Forest Sector Strategy.  Working with both internal and external partners, the proposed identified actions would be implemented over the five-year term if approved. Future collaboration may be used to draw on the expertise and advice from professionals in Ontario’s forest, manufacturing and construction sectors.

Environmental Implications

The draft Advanced Wood Construction Action Plan is not environmentally significant and is considered a voluntary posting. There are policies and procedures in place to guide the sustainable use of Ontario’s forest resources and ensure healthy, diverse, and resilient forests. Any required policy updates identified within the action plan would be addressed through separate, future ERO postings.

Regulatory impact analysis

This proposal is for a draft action plan and outlines the government of Ontario's efforts to influence the uptake of advanced wood construction over the next five years. We do not expect there to be environmental, social, or economic consequences arising from this action plan. The proposed actions from this plan will include things like promoting the concept of advanced wood construction, demonstrating the use of advanced wood construction, funding research, education and training, collaborating with other ministries on shared goals.

If implemented, stakeholders and other non-government entities will not incur any cost from its implementation. While proposed actions will not have direct consequence, they support an increase in the use of advanced wood construction, with the goal of providing economic benefit to the forestry, manufacturing and construction sectors in Ontario, bolstering of Ontario’s housing supply, and reduction in the carbon footprint of the built environment.