Motorcycle rain gear in Canada: laminated vs drop-liner vs oversuit, and what each costs landed

There are three ways to ride dry, and they differ in cost, weight and what they do to your protection. A laminated jacket bonds the waterproof membrane into the shell. A drop-liner jacket keeps the membrane on a separate zip-in layer inside an ordinary shell. An oversuit is a cheap waterproof layer that goes over everything. In ALLR’s Canadian catalog the choice shows up in the price: jackets that match “rain” in the catalog search have a median lowest landed price of CA$201 (302 pages with no class stated), while Gore-Tex jackets with no class stated sit at CA$1,301 (ALLR data, counted 2026-10-21).

The three constructions

REV’IT!’s page describes the 2-layer laminate as a membrane bonded to the outer fabric only, which is why a protective liner is always added; the 3-layer laminate puts the membrane between the outer and a backing fabric. It says liner systems give a lighter, more flexible shell, but the outer picks up water in heavy rain and is slow to dry in the cold, while laminates give a quick-drying shell with no saturation. Motorcycle News makes the same case from the buyer’s side: with a drop-liner the outer soaks, becomes heavy and cold, can block vent airflow, and the liner must be zipped back in; a laminate does not wet out and dries faster, but is stiffer, costs more and is less breathable, and it is overkill if you only ride in the sun. Both are sellers of the kit they describe, so treat the claims as consistent rather than independently measured.

What each does to your EN 17092 class

SATRA’s description of the abrasion test is the key fact: all removable liners, “for example, waterproof or thermal”, are removed before testing and the weakest combination is tested (SATRA). Three consequences follow:

• The class belongs to the shell. The liner makes the jacket waterproof but cannot raise (or lower) the class.
• The membrane is part of the garment, so it is part of what is tested. A laminated jacket can carry a class, as the Gore-Tex examples below show.
• Few state a class. In ALLR’s catalog, 322 of the 326 jacket pages matching “rain” (98.8%) state no EN 17092 class, and for pants it is 196 of 200 (98.0%). An oversuit goes over a protective jacket; it is not one.

The full class table is in the AAA, AA and A guide.

Pages by stated class, and price

Where a class is stated, Gore-Tex jackets are the priciest group: the median for Class A is CA$911.18 (n=14) and for Class AA CA$1,063.29 (n=49). The same table shows the point of the oversuit: a waterproof layer for a fraction of the price, mostly with no stated class of its own.

Example rain gear with landed prices

A pant-and-jacket oversuit pair from Alpinestars lands at CA$189.90 (79.95 + 109.95), against CA$554.99 for the cheapest Gore-Tex jacket above, before pants. Browse maker pages for Alpinestars, REV’IT! and Oxford, or the jackets and pants catalogs.

Choosing by how you ride

• A laminated jacket and pants, or a drop-liner jacket kept zipped in, avoids stopping to change. Budget about CA$550 and up for the Gore-Tex jacket, per the table.
• Keep a ventilated or drop-liner jacket and carry an oversuit; you pay once, around CA$190 for a jacket and pant pair from the examples.
• A drop-liner design lets you remove the liner in heat, which Motorcycle News notes is better than a laminate once the liner is out. See the hot-weather gear guide.
• A drop-liner outer that soaks is slow to dry in the cold according to REV’IT!, which points to a laminate, or an oversuit over the outer. See the cold-weather gear guide.

Boots and gloves are the other wet spots: waterproof options are covered in the boots guide and the gloves guide.

Buying rain gear from outside Canada

ALLR’s landed price adds shipping, estimated duty and a brokerage allowance to the item price. It uses 18% duty for textile jackets and pants and 13% for leather, from the 2026 Customs Tariff, and it excludes GST, HST and PST. Rain layers are cheap enough that the CA$25 brokerage allowance in the estimate weighs heavily, so check the shipping line on the product page before ordering a single CA$60 pant from overseas. Use the import duty calculator for one order.

Check the landed price

Each product page ranks stores by landed price to Canada; the method is on the methodology page. Disclosure: the Motorcycle News guide we cite is part of a paid partnership with Sportsbikeshop, and REV’IT!’s page is a maker’s own description.