Tuesday, October 21, 2025
As municipalities across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) face mounting budget pressures, a new report from the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis (CANCEA) shows that a simple change — standardizing asphalt mixes across the Greater Toronto Area — would unlock nearly $1 billion over the next decade.
Municipalities spend an average of 7.7 per cent of their annual capital budgets on paving and repairing their roads and each uses their own asphalt mix design. Those variations require suppliers to change materials, equipment, and testing procedures — sometimes dozens of times a day — leading to higher costs, lost productivity, and more waste. This is especially true in the GTA, where suppliers and contractors serve multiple municipal and regional markets that collectively require more than 300 different asphalt mix designs.
Commissioned by the Toronto Area Road Builders Association (TARBA), the landmark study, “Impact of Non-Standard Asphalt Mix Policies in the Greater Toronto Area,” reveals that efficiency gains from standardizing municipal asphalt mixes and testing standards could pave 1,800 additional lane-kilometres of road — without a single new tax dollar — while protecting more than 3,000 local jobs and $140 million in wages.
“Municipalities are facing rising construction costs, infrastructure deficits, and tighter budgets,” said Raly Chakarova, executive director of TARBA. “We can’t afford inefficiencies built into the system itself. Harmonizing road building standards is a simple, evidence-based way to make every infrastructure dollar go further – building safer roads, supporting local jobs, and delivering more for our communities — without asking taxpayers for a penny more.”
KEY REPORT FINDINGS
- Unlock nearly $1 billion: Harmonizing asphalt standards within the GTA alone would unlock nearly $1 billion in value over the next decade.
- Inaction is costly: Failure to standardize will drain more than $500 million from municipal budgets in the next 10 years — money that could have paved more than 1,000 lane-kilometers — while a slow roll-out would forfeit 40% of potential benefits forever.
- Boost for small businesses: Cutting red tape and uncertainty reduces risk and waste, creating a more level playing field that boosts productivity and competitiveness for small and medium-sized businesses, who make up more than half of the asphalt industry in the GTA.
- Protecting local jobs and wages: Harmonization protects more than 3,000 GTA jobs and $140 million in wages, keeping economic benefits within the communities where asphalt is produced and laid.
- Bigger gains through broader standardization: Extending harmonization throughout all aspects of road building and procurement would unlock $11.7 billion in broader gains, help reduce the growing infrastructure deficit, and deliver safer, high-performing roads.
“This study shows asphalt harmonization is about economy-wide efficiency, not new public spending,” said Paul Smetanin, president and CEO of CANCEA. “It lets producers raise productivity and helps municipalities complete resurfacing and repairs more quickly, with no added cost to residents.”
While provincial standards exist and are managed through the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and the Municipal Engineering Association, Ontario’s 444 municipalities have discretion in their implementation and have instead amassed hundreds of varying requirements for how to build and procure similar use projects, like roads, bridges, sewers, and watermains. These differences cost taxpayers millions of dollars more, while reducing quality and productivity and increasing waste and carbon emissions. When every municipality builds to the same proven standard, Ontario gets safer, greener, more cost-effective roads — faster.
Featured image: (TARBA)
