Materials & Infrastructure
The State of
Canada's Asphalt Roads:
A Province-by-Province Look
Over 90% of Canada's roads are paved with asphalt — but the condition of that pavement varies dramatically depending on where you are in the country.
Canada has over 415,000 kilometres of paved roads — and the vast majority of them are asphalt. For the people who design, build, and maintain those roads, understanding the current state of the network isn't just an academic exercise. It shapes how resources are allocated, which rehabilitation strategies make sense, and what the industry's workload looks like over the next decade.
This article draws on data from Statistics Canada's Core Public Infrastructure Survey and a 2021 vehicle operating cost analysis by CPCS (an infrastructure management consulting firm) to provide a province-by-province quantitative snapshot of network condition — and its implications for rehabilitation investment and pavement management prioritization.
The National Picture
According to Statistics Canada's Core Public Infrastructure Survey (based on 2018 data — the most comprehensive national dataset available), only about 52% of Canadian roads are in good or very good condition. The remaining 48% are rated fair, poor, or very poor.
Condition ratings sum to 95%; the remaining ~5% of reported assets were unrated or classified as no longer in service in the source data. Figures represent the share of road kilometres by condition category across all provincial and municipal networks.
In raw numbers, that's roughly 108,000 km of roads in poor condition and another 48,000 km rated very poor — meaning they require urgent rehabilitation or reconstruction. The replacement value of Canada's fair, poor, and very poor roads has been estimated at over $125 billion.
For pavement engineers and asset managers, these numbers frame the scale of the rehabilitation challenge and the magnitude of deferred investment required to restore the network to a state of good repair.
Province by Province
The national average masks significant regional variation. Atlantic Canada and Quebec consistently report the highest proportions of highways in deteriorated condition, while British Columbia and New Brunswick perform comparatively better on highway networks. The data below shows the percentage of highway kilometres rated below good condition by province.
These figures reflect highways — the provincial arterial network. Non-highway roads (arterial, collector, and local) tell a different story in several provinces. In Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island (PEI), New Brunswick, and Quebec, more than half of the non-highway road network is rated below good condition — a finding with significant implications for municipal asset management and funding adequacy.
For the industry, this distinction matters. Highway rehabilitation tends to be large-scale, well-funded, and planned years in advance. Municipal road rehabilitation is often underfunded, deferred, and politically complicated. The engineering challenge — and the workload — lives largely at the local level.
Vehicle Operating Cost Impacts: A Proxy for Rehabilitation Urgency
Beyond condition ratings, road deterioration carries a quantifiable economic cost. The CPCS study commissioned by the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) in 2021 estimated the incremental vehicle operating costs attributable to roads in poor or very poor condition, modelling the effects of pavement roughness on fuel consumption, tire wear, repair frequency, and vehicle depreciation across the national fleet.
Nationally, the average driver pays an extra $126 per year due to poor roads — adding up to over $1,250 over a vehicle's 10-year lifespan. In aggregate, poor roads cost Canadian drivers $3 billion annually. But the burden is not distributed equally.
Quebec stands out sharply at $258 per driver per year — more than double the national average. This reflects both the proportion of roads in poor condition and the volume of traffic driving on them. For context, a Quebec driver over a decade of vehicle ownership pays an estimated $2,580 in extra operating costs attributable solely to road condition.
These costs represent the consequence of deferred maintenance — and they make a compelling case for the value of proactive pavement preservation. Research consistently shows that spending $1 on preservation today can eliminate or defer $6–$10 in future reconstruction costs. The longer a road goes without treatment, the more the repair cost grows — and the more the driving public absorbs the shortfall through wear on their vehicles.
For engineers, this is a familiar argument: the pavement management literature has been making it for decades. The challenge has always been political will and budget cycles that reward new construction over maintenance. Understanding the true cost of inaction — in dollars, not just condition ratings — is an important part of making that case.