CALGARY - A boom in office tower building permit applications in Alberta and Ontario in December helped boost the national construction planning toll to $6.2 billion, 2.4 per cent higher than November and 32.6 per cent higher than in December 2008.

Statistics Canada reported Thursday that non-residential permits were entirely responsible for the month-over-month increase, as they climbed to a seasonally adjusted $2.286 billion from $2.139 billion in November. In December of 2008, they tallied $2.017 billion.

Residential building permits were steady from November to December at about $3.9 billion, as gains in British Columbia offset declines in Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba, but up a whopping 47 per cent from $2.63 billion in December 2008, thanks to big jumps in Nova Scotia, B.C. and Alberta and positive increases in every other province except Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island.

Calgary increased its building permit total in December to a seasonally adjusted $547 million, up 173 per cent compared with $200 million in December 2008. The percentage gain puts it seventh on a StatsCanada list of 34 municipalities, with the biggest increase of 444 per cent in Guelph, Ont.

In Calgary, the city reported last month that residential construction permits in December more than tripled to $153 million from a very weak $44.6 million in December 2008.

Non-residential building permits in December rose by 86 per cent, the city said, to $299 million from $161 million in the same period of 2008.

Nationally, in December, there was a 1.3 per cent decline from November in the value of single-family building permits, falling to $2.5 billion and breaking a streak of nine straight months of increases.

Alberta permits in December were $1.2 billion, up 61 per cent from December 2008 and ahead nine per cent from November.

Edmonton recorded $316 million in building permits in December, up 10 per cent compared with the same month a year ago and down 40 per cent from November.