Canada Eyes Right To Repair Protections In Latest Budget

The Canadian government is hopping aboard the right to repair bandwagon.

The Canadian federal government's 2023 budget includes language indicating that it will attempt to implement meaningful right to repair reforms by 2024, alongside a new five-year tax credit worth $4.5 billion for Canadian clean tech manufacturers, and the potential adoption of Canadian federal guidelines mandating a universal charging port on many devices to reduce waste.

The language indicates that the government will begin debating what the measure should look like shortly. It also makes it clear the goal is to improve consumer choice, reduce consumer costs, and eliminate the massive waste created by corporate attempts to monopolize repair:

When it comes to broken appliances or devices, high repair fees and a lack of access to specific parts often mean Canadians are pushed to buy new products rather than repairing the ones they have. This is expensive for people and creates harmful waste.

Devices and appliances should be easy to repair, spare parts should be readily accessible, and companies should not be able to prevent repairs with complex programming or hard-to-obtain bespoke parts. By cutting down on the number of devices and appliances that are thrown out, we will be able to make life more affordable for Canadians and protect our environment.

While consumer protection has been an ugly mess on many fronts, watching the right to repair movement shift from nerdy niche to mainstream remains one of the more positive recent developments. Natasha Tusikov, an Associate Professor at York University, sums up the movement rather succinctly:

The right-to-repair movement can be understood as a consumer pushback against the commodification of knowledge and a battle over who should be allowed to control and use knowledge - to repair, tinker or innovate - and in whose interests.

Of course politicians claiming to support right to repair reforms and actually implementing them are two different things, and global corporations will spare no expense trying to ensure that, much like in the U.S., any competent federal requirements remain perpetually sidelined despite broad, bipartisan support.