Most advice about building permit data for lead generation stops at “permits are public, get there first.” True, but useless without one number: how long is “first”? If a permit is issued in 11 days, your head start is measured in days. If it takes two months, you have a different game entirely.
We pulled the answer from our own dataset of more than 3 million Canadian building permits across 31 cities, current as of July 2026. For every city that publishes elapsed processing days and has at least 50 valid records, we measured the time from application to issuance over the trailing 24 months. The spread is wide, and it should change how you work each market.
Application-to-Issuance Time by City
This is the time between a permit application appearing on the public record and the permit actually being issued. The median matters more than the average here, because a handful of large, slow projects drag the average up while most permits clear closer to the median.
| City | Avg days | Median days | Records (24 mo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thunder Bay | 29.9 | 11 | 1,843 |
| Kelowna | 38.2 | 12 | 2,967 |
| Montreal | 50.8 | 17 | 40,780 |
| St. Catharines | 61.0 | 31 | 1,985 |
| Toronto | 82.1 | 32 | 41,436 |
| Vancouver | 112.5 | 69 | 9,652 |
As of July 2026. Source: SiteWire permit warehouse.
Read that as a map of your lead window. In Thunder Bay, half of all permits clear in 11 days, so a permit you find on the application record gives you a tight, fast-moving head start. In Vancouver, the median is 69 days. That is over two months where the project is on the record, the owner is committed, and most competitors haven’t looked yet.
Slower is not worse for you. A long issuance window is more time to identify the project, find the right contact, and scope a quote before the work starts.
Why Work Type Changes Everything
City-level numbers hide a second layer. The type of work drives the timeline far more than the city does. Here is Vancouver broken out by work type over the same 24 months:
| Work type (Vancouver) | Avg days | Median days | Records |
|---|---|---|---|
| Temporary Building / Structure | 21.9 | 12 | 81 |
| Salvage and Abatement | 60.7 | 28 | 927 |
| Addition / Alteration | 71.6 | 41 | 4,953 |
| Demolition / Deconstruction | 154.9 | 120 | 1,422 |
| New Building | 198.8 | 159 | 2,301 |
As of July 2026. Source: SiteWire permit warehouse.
A new building in Vancouver has a median of 159 days from application to issuance. An addition or alteration clears in 41. So a contractor chasing renovation work and a contractor chasing ground-up construction are playing on completely different clocks in the same city. If you do renovations, the alteration permits move roughly four times faster than new-build permits, and your outreach cadence has to match that.
This is the practical use of permit data: not just “a project exists,” but “how much runway do I have before this becomes a competitive bid.”
What You Can and Can’t Read From Permit Data
A permit record tells you the project address, the work type, and the dates. That is enough to filter by your trade and geography and to time your outreach.
One thing it does not tell you: the outcome. Our dataset has no permit status or approval field, so we never publish approval rates or rejection rates, and you should be skeptical of any tool that claims to. An issuance date tells you a permit cleared. It does not tell you anything about permits that were withdrawn or denied, because that data simply isn’t in the public record we work from. Honest lead generation works off what’s verifiable: the project, the type, and the timing.
Turning the Window Into a Process
Once you know your market’s real timeline, the workflow is straightforward:
- Set your geography. Travel time kills margin on small jobs, so define the cities or radius you actually serve.
- Filter by work type, not just location. As the Vancouver breakdown shows, work type sets the clock. Track the permit types that match your trade and ignore the rest.
- Time outreach to the window. In a fast market like Thunder Bay (11-day median), you contact within days or you’ve missed it. In Vancouver (69-day median), you have weeks to scope properly before the bid heats up.
- Track every contact. A 200-permit spreadsheet you can’t sort or follow up on is just noise. You need a status field, a contact field, and a way to pull fresh data without re-doing the work each week.
The bottleneck for most contractors isn’t finding permits. It’s staying organized long enough to work them systematically instead of chasing the first few and burning out.
Conclusion
Building permit data for lead generation only works when you know how big your window actually is. An 11-day median in Thunder Bay and a 159-day median for new builds in Vancouver demand completely different timing. The data above, drawn from more than 3 million Canadian permits, gives you the real numbers to plan against instead of guessing.
SiteWire tracks Canadian building permits across 31 cities so you can filter by your trade, see the timing in your market, and reach projects while the window is still open. Start a free trial and see what’s active in your area this week.