Material prices and customs tariffs in 2026: how to protect your estimates

Steel, aluminum, lumber: the tariffs in force and six concrete protections — short validity, adjustment clause, allowance — so you don’t pay for the increase.

Since 2025, the price of an estimate can become wrong before the client has even read it. American tariffs and Canadian countermeasures have followed one another, and the building construction price index keeps rising — faster in Montréal than elsewhere last quarter. You don't control the tariffs. You control how your estimate reacts to them.

Where things stand — as of August 28, 2026

The Québec government maintains a page of the American tariffs and Canadian measures in force (last update: August 28, 2026). The essentials for a contractor:

What hits your invoice is not the American tariff itself — it hits the Canadian suppliers who export — but its effects: counter-tariffs on the American-origin products you buy, quotas, reorganized supply chains, suppliers passing on the loss of a market. The link between a decree and your purchase price is never direct. That is exactly why you must measure rather than guess.

What the indices say

• Statistics Canada, Building Construction Price Index, 2^nd quarter 2026 (published July 24, 2026): in Canada, +0.5% in the quarter for residential (+2.3% year over year) and +1.4% for non-residential (+3.5% year over year).
• Montréal: +2.5% residential and +1.9% non-residential in the quarter alone; Québec City: +2.6% and +2.7%. Metal work (+2.1%) leads the residential increase, with structural steel and earthwork.
• Statistics Canada explicitly attributes part of the increases to the retaliatory customs duties between Canada and the United States, which disrupted supply chains and made metal and steel products more expensive.

The fixed price is your risk — unless a clause says otherwise

Article 2109 of the Civil Code of Québec is unambiguous: when the contract is for a fixed price, the client pays the agreed price, and the contractor cannot claim an increase in the price because the work cost more than expected. Without a clause, the increase is yours. And as a general rule, a price increase is not force majeure: it makes performance more expensive, not impossible — don't count on it.

• Commercial contract (between businesses). A materials price adjustment clause is legal and common — provided it is negotiated and signed before the work starts, not added to the invoice. That has been the recommendation of the Corporation des maîtres électriciens (CMEQ) since February 2025.
• Contract with a consumer. The Consumer Protection Act prohibits changing the price unilaterally. For the uncertain portion, the CMEQ suggests a "time and materials" mode (cost plus) with transparent documentation of expenses — or a short validity and a new estimate.
• Public call for tenders or BSDQ. You add no condition the documents do not allow — the bid would be non-compliant. Look for the adjustment mechanism in the tender documents, or request an addendum during the bidding period. The Société québécoise des infrastructures (SQI) has applied since 2022 a materials and equipment price adjustment clause based on Statistics Canada's monthly indices, with a price breakdown and a calculation form. The standard CCDC 2 contract (2024 edition), for its part, provides for price adjustment for changes in taxes and customs duties occurring after bid closing.

Six concrete protections

1. A short validity, aligned with your suppliers

Fifteen to thirty days, written on the estimate. Ask your suppliers for dated prices and attach them to the file: your validity ends when theirs ends. If the client needs more (a condominium meeting, a board of directors), reconfirm the prices before signing rather than extending the validity.

2. A written adjustment clause — commercial contracts

A starting wording, to have validated by your legal advisor: "The prices of the following materials — [rebar, membrane, aluminum…] — are established on the basis of supplier prices as of [date], attached as an appendix. If, between that date and the order, the purchase price of any of them varies by more than [5]%, the variation, upward or downward, is passed on to the client upon presentation of invoices, without additional margin." The symmetry is not generosity: it is what makes the clause acceptable to the client — and credible before a third party.

3. A separate clause for taxes and customs duties

On the CCDC 2 model: "Any tax or customs duty that is new or changed after the date of the estimate and affects the materials supplied is added to or deducted from the price, on supporting documents." A decree is not a market variation; treat it separately.

4. An allowance for volatile items

A line "Allowance — structural steel: $12,000", reconciled at invoicing on supporting documents. The mechanism is commonplace for finishes (the client chooses their tile); it is just as legitimate for metals in 2026.

5. Order early, lock the price

When the contract is signed, order the exposed materials without waiting — the CMEQ already recommended buying before the tariffs took effect. Ask the supplier for a written price hold, and align the deposit with the materials order (see the estimate template).

6. Document — everything

Dated supplier prices, invoices, correspondence. An adjustment request without documents fails; the associations also remind us that the increase claimed must not result from a careless estimate at the outset. Check with the supplier the cost, availability and how long the product is offered at that price — before bidding.

Measure rather than guess: keep your own index

Statistics Canada gives the average; your reality is your suppliers. A price book where every price carries its date makes the difference: when pricing, you see which ones are more than 60 days old and you re-check them — the others, you keep. It is ten minutes of work per estimate that replaces an intuition.

How BatiCore does it: a price catalogue with the cost, the margin (per category, or per item) and the computed selling price, which you update with every supplier price; sections with subtotals, optional lines outside the total; a "Valid until" date on every estimate (with an adjustable default in your settings); and, when a price must be reconfirmed, a version 2 that replaces the first without erasing it — the client sees the new one, you keep the history.

And your contracts in progress?

• You are bound by what is signed. Reread the clauses: adjustment, taxes and duties, timelines.
• If an adjustment mechanism exists, follow its procedure to the letter (notices, deadlines, documents).
• If none exists, talk to the client early, with figures and invoices in hand, and propose a written change order — never a surcharge on the invoice.
• For upcoming contracts, put the six protections in place before the next estimate, not after the next increase.

The BatiCore team

We build BatiCore, management software for Québec construction contractors — estimates, job sites, CCQ payroll, compliance. Our articles cite dated public sources; when a fact comes from a regulator or a competitor, we say which one and when. Spotted an error? Write to us, we fix it.