Canada's Broken Highway Infrastructure

Podcast Episod: 0238
Why does Canada not have a national Highway Act?

     Canadians, are we missing out on a world-class highway system? Join us as we shed light on the challenges facing Canada's highway infrastructure, with a special focus on Ontario's Highway 69. Despite being a powerhouse in terms of economic contribution, Ontario lags behind when it comes to a 

​​comprehensive highway system akin to those found in the U.S. We'll explore the slow journey of expanding this crucial route to four lanes, hindered by differing provincial priorities and the absence of a national standard, while also drawing comparisons to British Columbia's highway development efforts to maintain natural beauty.

Explore the intriguing disparities in Canadian infrastructure as we contrast Ontario's underdeveloped highway systems with the substantial investment funneled into Toronto, raising questions about provincial fund allocation. We share personal anecdotes of traveling through Ontario's often congested two-lane roads, dealing with unexpected delays and detours. Imagine a world where Canada adopts American interstate standards—could this solve some of our infrastructure woes or create new challenges? We ponder this intriguing hypothetical scenario, examining its potential implications for Canadian provinces.

Discover the transformative power of a national highway pact and its promise of boosting the transportation industry and creating jobs. With over half of Canada's GDP dependent on transport trucks, expanding our highway networks is more than just a convenience—it's an economic necessity. We invite you to contribute your thoughts and join the conversation on this critical topic. Let's consider how improved infrastructure planning and execution can support economic growth, safety, and connectivity across our vast nation.

​Everett J.

​      Well, the year was 1991. My parents had recently separated and as I was heading down south constantly to go see my mother, I noticed something was changing. Something was growing. The government was actually starting to invest money in four-leaning Highway 69 further north, but only doing 10 to 20 kilometers at a time. This went on for about three or four years and then all of a sudden, it started taking two to three years to do them and the sections got smaller and smaller, and then we'd go years between anything happening.
 
        My home city ranks number three for GDP for the province of Ontario and yet, even though it's been over a hundred thousand people since the 1950s and ranked in one of the top 10 biggest cities in the entire province back well, let's just say, up until the mid-70s it still has never had a proper infrastructure built to it. There is no four-lane highway heading to it. Why? Because it's in Northern Ontario. But there's another reason why Because the province of Ontario and the country of Canada still can't agree on what defines a proper infrastructure. There are no set rules in Canada to build interstate systems similar to the United States. Every province has its own governing body and its own way of dealing with what defines expansion of highway systems, and I've come to learn this over my lifetime of traveling back and forth down Highway 69, going to Toronto. Sure, we're now down to 68 kilometers left of Four Lane, but when I was a kid, at eight years old, when my parents got divorced and they started 4-Laning for the first time in four years, we had 200 kilometers. I was eight. I'm turning 42 this year. You can't tell me it takes that long to four lane, 200 kilometers of roadway. So today AutoLooks is going to take a look at the reason why the province of Ontario is not unlike any other province in the entire country of Canada and why Canada doesn't have an interstate system.
 
       Welcome back to the AutoLooks podcast. I am your host, as always, the doctor to the automotive industry, Mr. Everett Jay, coming to you from our host website at AutoLooks.net. If you haven't been there, stop by check it out. Read some of the reviews. Check out some of the ratings. Doctor to the automotive industry, Mr. Everett j, coming to you from our host website at AutoLooks.net. If you haven't been there, stop by check it out. Read some of the reviews. Check out some of the ratings. Go to the corporate links website page. Check our end of the year reviews, all from AutoLooks.net, and, while they're, check out the help pages and see some of the other stuff that we have on the website. The outlook podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group, distributed by PodBean.com. The AutoLooks podcast is hosted by the one and only Mr. Everett jay and distributed by PodBean. Going across every major streaming site, from Spotify to iTunes, you can find the AutoLooks podcast at and, if you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over email at AutoLooks.net. 

        So, like I said in the beginning, a Canadian interstate system. Well, if you're like myself and you've traveled across the great white north, I've literally been from sea to sea on our highway system. I have traversed, except for a portion of the Trans-Canada and Newfoundland, because it's the only province I've been to. I have traversed every other portion of the Trans-Canada Highway and while traversing it, I've come to realize that there are only two provinces in this entire country that you have to travel on a two-lane highway. Why? Because every other province except for British Columbia and Ontario believe that the Trans Canada is a vital piece of infrastructure that needs to have the most amount of money into it because, like I said, it's a vital resource. It's where all of our trade travel on the Trans Canada traverses, from coast to coast to coast, essentially because it actually goes all the way up to Inuvik. Now we're not saying you need to four lane and going all the way up to Inuvik where you know essentially there's barely anything, because when you leave Dawson City, you're over six hours of nothing, literal nothing. One gas station in the middle and that's it. But going from Victoria all the way out to Nova Scotia, traveling along the Trans-Canada Highway, nearly every major portion of it is four-laned. There's a section that goes out to the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia. That's not complete but Nova Scotia is working on it. The reason why that section hasn't been done is because it's low volume. They have a four-lane limited access highway going all the way to Halifax, so you can go from Halifax all the way up and down through the Southern Ontario Belt and out to Windsor. You can access every major area of the United States.
 
       On the East Coast of Canada they've determined that every vital link road needs to be expanded, whether it be limited access four lane or limited access two lane. It needs to be expanded for an area that barely has any growth. Like I said, when my parents divorced in 1991, the country of Canada had less than 30 million people. We're literally sitting at about 24 million people in this country. We have literally just crossed the 40 million mark last year in 2024. So, we've added a ton of those people, but where did they go? Lower mainland, B.C., St. Lawrence lowlands in Quebec and Southern Ontario, which is essentially anywhere south of the Muskoka’s. Besides that, a travel way between Calgary and Edmonton are the only other areas in the country. That is substantially growth. So why is it? When I'm on the east coast of Canada, I'm traveling on a four-lane highway? Literally, Trans-Canada Highway through New Brunswick is 100% four-lane highway. Literally, Trans-Canada Highway through New Brunswick is 100% four-lane.
 
      I traveled out there back in the 90s after my parents were divorced. I think it was about 93, 94. When we went out there, they were building their limited access freeway-style four-lane highway in an area that had cities smaller than my home city. They were building these. They were building them in Nova Scotia, they were adding them to Newfoundland, all from areas that don't have the same amount of population as what runs between North Bay and Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. Sault Ste Marie is nearly 80,000 people. The city of Greater Sudbury is 168,000 people and the city of North Bay is creeping closer to 60,000. Doesn't seem like a lot, considering the fact between Sudbury and the Sioux is three hours and Sudbury and North Bay is an hour and a half. But when you're on the east coast of Canada, from Edmunston all the way down to Fredericton is nearly two hours, from Fredericton to Moncton is nearly two hours and then from Moncton to Halifax is nearly three hours. But they have a limited access highway and at the time in the 90s, all three of those cities, excluding Halifax, were all smaller than both Sudbury and Sault Ste Marie. But they built it. They developed an interstate system because they knew the trade routes would help benefit their economy. They knew people are more likely to travel into areas with freeway access highways, if not that, at least four-lane broken road highways. 

​       If you've traveled from Toronto all the way up to North Bay, Ontario, it's a four-lane broken, not freeway style everywhere, but broken highway. That's why Highway 11 is not 411. And the province of Ontario is one of the few areas in the entire country that actually has its own dedicated interstate-style number codes for highways. Anything marked 400 is limited access throughways. So, Highway 11 going up to North Bay can't be considered the 411 because it's not limited access the whole way. 400 going all the way up to Parry Sound is the 400. Once complete, all the way to Sudbury, it would be the 400 going from Toronto to Sudbury. Unfortunately, that's a 60-year-long endeavor, considering the fact that Highway 69 wasn't even completed until the mid-1960s and its 4-Laning started in 1978. Nothing has been done.
 
      The amount of traffic on Highway 17 between North Bay and Sault Ste Marie far exceeds the traffic that you'll find running up the coast of New Brunswick. And yet last summer, when I was traveling, I decided to take the back route, go up towards Bathurst, and it's a two-lane, limited-access highway, but it was still limited access. It was a two-lane, limited-access highway, but it was still limited access. It was still a free-flowing highway, something we don't have in the North. Now the question is why doesn't Canada have an interstate system? Well, like I said, in 1991, there was only about eight and a half million people in the province of Ontario, which made up a third of the population of the entire country of Canada. Even to this day, Ontario makes up a third of the population of the entire province of Canada, with over 10 million people in our province with a population of over 40 million people, and out of that, over 65% of the population runs between Pickering, Ontario, up as far north as Vaughan, over as far west as Milton and curling all the way around to Stoney Creek. It's called the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Corridor. It's one megacity. There's nearly over 7 million people within it. If you didn't know this, when you travel through Toronto, the QEW is actually the first limited access highway ever created in all of North America. The Americans basically gave birth to the limited access highway. They showcased it at the New York World's Fair, but Canada was the first to implement it. The QEW was built for the Queen's arrival in the 1950s, long before the interstate system was put into play. But why did the Americans build their interstate system? Yeah, they had the population to base it on, but not everywhere had that population. 

​       I've traveled all across the states. I've been to 33 different states. I've only been to one where I haven't been to anything around it because I flew to it for my brother's wedding. But every other state I've driven through. I've been through Montana. I've been all the way to the tip of Florida. I've been to every state on the eastern seaboard, except for South Carolina. I don't know why. I guess because I-95 doesn't go straight through it to the south or north, one of the two and while traveling through a lot of these, like Montana, the state of Montana has a smaller population than all of northern Ontario but has an interstate technically two interstates running right through it. They have their east west and they have a north south line. North south line is only made to connect to the Canadian border and then east west is made so you can get across the country. They built this system because every state had to have an easily accessible highway that was safe and flowed from state to state.
 
      Canada, we have never enacted that. Every province has its own set rules and that's a big problem when you consider the fact that over the next 30 years Canada is going to be adding over another 20 million people. So, we're going to finally hit 60 million people within the next 30 years. We're going to finally hit 60 million people within the next 30 years. We're going to need better highway systems. We need better infrastructure to move people along.
 
       The province of BC has now outlined that Highway 1, or the Trans-Canada Highway along its southern corridor, from the Alberta border all the way to Vancouver now needs to be expanded. They're not going full limited access in some areas they're just doing four-lane broken roads. But they say it's because it's too costly to move people out to build these highways. It's like well, let me see, you've had 60 years to develop this system but have never done it. I get it. You go traversing through these mass mountains. It's expensive to do it, but there are areas along there that it wouldn't be so expensive. Let's take into consideration Sweden, Norway or Finland, who have developed massive highways even through their northern corridors.
 
       And yet BC, which at one point was one of the fastest growing provinces in the entire country. During the 90s, B.C. was our California. If you live in Vancouver, you hardly ever see snow, unless you go to the mountains. It was a more temperate climate compared to the rest of the country, so a lot of people went, but they didn't build a limited access highway because they said it would take away from their natural aspect of their environment. Well, go live in Kelowna, B.C. right now. Go, actually just go onto Google Maps and go over top of Kelowna and see how a city, one of the fastest growing in the country, what type of infrastructure it has for the movement of people and goods. 

        See, people always see interstates and big highways or freeways in cities as a major investment. That's just going to make it so that people want to urbanize everything. Well, there is some part of that, because as they built them in California during the 1950s, they urbanized all the valley areas and more people moved out and out and out and out and eventually you got this mass urbanization where tons of people had to just utilize their vehicle and their vehicle only. We get that. That's the reason why the city of Vancouver has been so reluctant to build brand new limited access throughways. They now have a dedicated transport route going north-south, because essentially going north-south, coming off the Trans-Canada Highway and having to go to the States, you have to travel along surface roads to make crossovers, to get down there. There is no freeway access unless you actually take the transport route, which isn't even fully limited access. But what happens when you don't have systems like this? I see it all the time.
 
        Just this past week, being wintertime, we had a snowstorm. It was very close to the city of North Bay and Highway 17, running between Sudbury and North Bay. There are sections of it that, if it gets shut down, you got to go way out of your way. I'll put this into my perspective. Where my parents live, just west of Sudbury, about an hour west, there's a certain section where the highway has no way to go around it. So, for a section roughly about 20 kilometers crossing the Spanish River, if there is an accident there or if the bridge collapsed, the only way around it is to go all the way to Bruce Mines, take a highway all the way up to Highway 101, cross over towards Timmins and come all the way back down. An hour-long drive into the city of Sudbury in the middle of wintertime will take you nearly eight and a half hours. If you had to drive all the way down to Highway 69 to go all the way around it, you added two and a half hours to your trip.
 
       I had a boss that was coming to work once. They were coming from Thunder Bay all the way to Sudbury, to our office, and the Highway 17 was shut down and they had to go take Highway 11. It added ten and a half hours to their trip because all we have are two-lane highways. When there's an accident with a death on it, the highway gets shut down between six to eight hours. That means goods crossing the country are literally at a standstill for an entire shift. Okay, that's into perspective for you an entire shift. 

​      Sault Ste Marie is one of two steel cities in the entire country, the other one being Hamilton. Hamilton has limited access freeways everywhere around it. It's a greater Toronto-Hamilton area. It is the area that over 90% of the infrastructure money for the province of Ontario are injected into. Yes, the rest of the province fights over the remaining 10%. Trust me, the government of Ontario refuses to finish the highway, the 68 kilometers coming to Sudbury, because the price tag is nearly $3 billion. Now, 20 years ago they said it was too expensive when it was 120 kilometers at $1.1 billion. Back then. That same year, they said $1.1 billion is too expensive to finish the highway. They wrote a check to put one kilometer of collector lanes in Mississauga for $115 million. They didn't even have an assessment done and they wrote the check for it the year. The Doug Ford government denied 69 being finished. He's saying nearly $3 billion is too expensive to finish that for the traffic volumes that we have. Meanwhile they dumped over $6 billion into the city of Toronto to expand its subway lines, but they can't finish our highway. They've been working on for 60 years, 60 years. Yes, this entire country has an infrastructure problem.
 
     Recently, with Trump getting back into power in the United States and him putting out the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state. I always love to hear this and I laugh about it. I said you know; the funniest thing is if I actually became the 51st state, you know what would happen to the province of Ontario in BC? I'm like they'd be fucked literally. I'm putting that right out there. They would be 100% fucked because if Canada was a 51st state, the interstate law in the United States would come into effect. Now the prairies, their four-lane highways, aren't fully limited access, not everywhere, so for them it's just building bridges, that's all it is. That's not too bad, say miss, same as Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, no problem. East Coast already done. 

​         Ontario Highway 17 is the Trans-Canada in Ontario and the four-lane of 417 ends right outside of Ottawa, just outside of Arnprior. Ontario is where the 417, the four-lane ends. The next time you ever hit a four-lane highway is five hours later when you're going through Subway. You travel along a 20-kilometer section built in 1981, when the government promised a four-lane highway, 17 for us, but didn't they build 20 kilometers limited access. Actually, it's not even fully limited access, because the very last connection, where the old highway, which is now 55, regional Road 55, comes out, it's a crossover onto the highway and, trust me, there's at least three to six people killed every year at that intersection, every year, and they still refuse to do anything about it. After that, you hit another 40 kilometers outside of Sault Ste Marie, Ontario.
 
       After you leave Sault Ste Marie, the next time you hit a four-lane Acre crossing section of highway. It's just outside of Nipigon, Ontario. Nearly six and a half hours later, just before that section is slowly being built up. Between there and Thunder Bay. About two hours, you cross over a multitude of different four-lane sections. After Thunder Bay, you don't hit another four-lane section of highway until you cross over to the Manitoba border. Another four-lane section of highway until you cross over to the Manitoba border.
 
        Right now, they're starting to expand Highway 17 to four-lane accurate crossings from the Manitoba border all the way to Kenora only because the province of Manitoba fought with the province of Ontario, stating the fact that most people from the city of Winnipeg have camps in Ontario by Kenora, not on Lake Winnipeg. So, they pushed us to expand our highway. Outside of my door on 17, when I ride on, it is over 1,500 kilometers from where I am to the Manitoba border and I'm over five hours away from Ottawa. So, from here it's in like 500 kilometers, any of the 2,000 kilometers across the province of Ontario. The Trans-Canada Highway out of those 2,000 kilometers, the Trans-Canada Highway out of that 2,000 kilometers, 120 kilometers of that is four lanes. So, 1,880 kilometers across the province of Ontario is two-lane standardized highway that was built between the 50s and 60s. You only have passing lanes. This is the Trans-Canada Highway. It traverses our entire country and it's two-lane.
 
      Pretty funny, huh. Second largest country in the world, third country in the world for oil, one of the top countries in the world for mineral reserves, one of the top countries in the world for the amount of fresh water, and yet if you want to cross this country, when you get to the city of Sault Ste Marie, it's actually safer for you to cross the border into northern Michigan, cross the top of the peninsula all the way across to Wisconsin and Minnesota and come up by Winnipeg, even though the third best drive in the entire country for scenery is from Batchewana Bay to Nipigon, Ontario Highway 17. I get it, if you four-laned it you would lose that luster. But I'm not saying full lane it. I'm saying you need to create a two-lane, dedicated highway. Transports need a direct route and nothing that's too close to the lake. If they were pushed further back into the mountains on a standard two-lane transport-rated highway, essentially a 1 plus 2 highways like they have in northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, you can make it safer. But that would be building proper infrastructure, something that both the province of Ontario and British Columbia will never do. Now think about it. How much would it cost to four-lane 1,880 kilometers, in today's value, across the complete Canadian Shield? The easiest parts of that entire section to four-lane are between North Bay, Ontario, and Sault Ste Marie. There's a small section east of the city of Sudbury where you travel through hard rock, but the rest of it is lower level rock and farmland which you can easily and cheaply Four Lane. 

​       Canada is stuck in a major infrastructure deficit. We've added more people in the past decade to our country than we ever have in our entire history. Unfortunately, in this country we push everybody towards five major cities Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary or Vancouver. There's a lot more to Canada than just these five cities. And out of all those cities, only two of them have ever built proper infrastructure Calgary and Montreal. Montreal is now realizing that it needs to build better infrastructure within its system. It now needs to build HOV lanes and light rail transit, because all of its main limited access highways were built at a time that it was then the car was king, but public transit wasn't. Now they're learning. Public transit needs to be increased. The city of Calgary has already been on top of that. Now they just need to expand their highway.
 
      You see, the United States realized during the 1950s, before they developed their interstate system, that more and more goods were being shipped by truck. Trucks were faster than shipping by train. Shipping by train is cheaper across longer distances. Trust me, the best thing you can do if you want to ship across the country of Canada is, when you get stuff to either North Bay or Sudbury, put it on a train and ship it all the way to Manitoba. Once it hits Manitoba, put it on a truck and ship it somewhere else. You have to remember along the Highway 17 corridor or the Trans-Canada Highway in Northern Ontario. Along that portion it's roughly about 670,000 people. In four major cities, there's over 100,000 other people that ride along Highway 11. But consider the fact that when you get to those major cities, all you need to do is just have a few trucks go out Hell, even from the city of Sudbury. An intermodal facility there, the Thunder Bay, would take so much more off of our highways, but we still don't utilize rail systems in this country to its proper benefit.
 
     The country of Canada relies so much on truck transportation and yet the infrastructure that the trucks have to travel across in this country in some areas is from the 1960s at the newest point. When you hit the prairies, it's four-lane, act-grade crossing highways from there pretty much to just outside of Calgary. Most major cities have limited access, freeway style but besides that, most of them are act-grade. But there are four-lane highways. Sure, you have to slow down while you're in small towns for traffic lights, because some of them don't have bridges. And you do have to slow down, but besides that, when you have a snowstorm, you're not directly head on with somebody else. And yet also when they're out in the prairies there's a lot more roads. So, when one road gets closed, it's like southern Ontario when one road gets closed, there's another road to take it. You lose 15 minutes or travel, that's it. But in select areas of this country, when the roads are shut down from bad weather, they're shut down and trade does not move.
 
      The city of suburbia the government has actually put it out we're the third highest GDP out of every major city in the entire province, with only the city of Toronto and the city of Guelph per capita GDP is higher than us. We outrank Ottawa and Hamilton for GDP per capita. Like per person in the city of Sudbury is worth more Our full GDP, gross domestic product for the entire country than cities with four times more population than we have. It's kind of funny. And yet our GDP rides on the fact that when we ship stuff out, it may not get there on time. The funny thing is I know this firsthand from jobs. I've worked throughout my life trying to plan around getting stuff delivered. I don't know how many times I've had contractors waiting on site for their product get delivered and I have to call them and tell them that the truck is literally stuck on the highway. You'll get your material tomorrow. I would never have to deal with a situation like that if I lived in a major city and had proper infrastructure.
 
      But Canada doesn't have a National Highway Act. The federal government has never enacted a Federal Highway Act. The last prime minister that even considered it was Jean Chrétien in the 90s. He wanted to create a National Highway Act making the Trans-Canada Highway a national important highway. That had to be four-lane, limited access everywhere in the country. He was outranked by everyone else. Everyone else in the government said no, like Northern Ontario, certain areas in BC and even out in the prairies or the East Coast. There's not enough population to warrant this. It's going to cost us so much money and it's not going to benefit us. Crap Bullshit. 

       Funny thing is I wrote an article in high school over 20 years ago that talked about the benefits of limited access interstate systems in the United States and how the fact that the interstate system helped build so many big cities. The interstates literally built the economies of so many small towns into small cities. Think about it Without an interstate going to Mount Rushmore, do you think there'd be any major cities close by? No, without an interstate running through Montana, do you think anybody in the United States would know where Butte Montana is? Besides the people that have watched Beavis and Butthead and kind of laugh at. You know Butthead says butt, peck and wipe right, I've actually found them all on a map. No, you wouldn't.
 
       You need the proper infrastructure for it, and that's the problem. Our country doesn't. And if we're going to be adding another 20 million people to this country even though where I live in Northern Ontario is lucky if it's going to get 100,000 people of that 20 million you still need to develop the proper infrastructure for an entire country to operate as a singular unit. Relying on the American interstate system to move products between Southern Ontario and the Western provinces just means that Americans are going to stick it to you when it comes to free trade agreements. Americans know that we need their highway systems to move stuff across this continent. Why? Because our country is too fucking cheap to build a proper infrastructure that we desperately need to move products along. Our GDP could increase with a national interstate system or, in this case, a national interprovincial system.
 
       Chrétien was on to something and, unfortunately, unless the replacement for Justin Trudeau in our country comes to an agreement and actually states that we need to get this put into place, it'll never happen. As you've already noticed, all provinces except for two understand the importance of our national highway. So, in all reality, will it ever get done? Will I ever be able to drive on a four-lane highway from my home city four hours south? My grandfather always told me he would never see it. My father didn't believe that he wouldn't, but my father actually believes now he will never see it, considering the fact that he's turning 70 soon this year, and I believe him. I don't think he'll ever see that highway finished. I'll be lucky if my son becomes the first generation in our family to drive on a four-lane highway from our city to the south. Why? Because of the highway standards set in place by the province of Ontario. They're set at a 95% capacity rating based off of traffic volumes in the greater Toronto area. That is why, where every other province bases it on overall traveling, which means if a highway far exceeds 60% capacity over a 24-hour period, at any point it's expanded. In Ontario it has to be 95% capacity for 24 hours to prove it needs to be expanded. So, in all reality, our federal government really needs to step in, put their foot down and say, we need a national highway pact and because of that, Canada will never have its own interstate system.

        So, if you like this podcast. Please like, share or comment about it on any major social feeds or streaming sites that you found the AutoLooks podcast on. Go to the website. Read some of the reviews, send us a comment. Send us an email at email at AutoLooks.net and tell us what you think about Canada developing its own interprovincial highway system. 

      Do we need a highway pact? We sure we have areas that don't require a big four lane highway, but when over 50% of your gross product travels by transport truck and moves across the entire country, we can increase the number of jobs in transportation alone by creating a national highway pact. Tell me what you think, send in the comments, send us an email and, like I said, go to the website, read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings. Go to corporate links website page, big or small. We have them all car copies from around the globe on the AutoLooks.net website. The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group or distributed at PodBean.com. If you like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at email at AutoLooks.net. So, from myself, Everett Jay, the crew over at Ecomm Entertainment Group, myself, the owner, the operator and the host of the AutoLooks podcast and the AutoLooks.net website. Strap yourself in for this one fun wild ride that the lack of an interstate will take us on. 

Everett J.
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