The Great Canadian Breakdown: What will it take to get a “Right to Repair” in Canada?
The Great Canadian Breakdown: What will it take to get a “Right to Repair” in Canada?
Alissa Centivany
Fixing things in Canada has never been more difficult. Smartphones, laptops, refrigerators, washing machines, smart speakers, virtual assistants, cars, bicycles, wheelchairs, pacemakers, ventilators, tractors, tanks, fighter jets, and almost every other device or piece of equipment in our homes and workplaces is more costly, more inconvenient, and more difficult, if not impossible, to repair. Barriers to repair impact all industries, sectors, and regions. No one is spared from the Great Canadian Breakdown. As breakdown becomes more pervasive, the need for a comprehensive Canadian “right to repair” becomes more critical.
Repair matters for three key reasons. As Canadians grapple with an affordability crisis, repair makes good economic sense. Fixing what we already have costs less than buying new, keeps more money in our wallets, and bolsters local economies by supporting independent repair technicians and markets for used goods. In addition, as the effects of the climate crisis grow increasingly undeniable, repair promotes sustainability. Extending the useful life of the things we already have reduces waste, keeps things out of the landfill, and tempers our habits of (over)consumption that are wreaking havoc on the planet. Finally, as I testified before members of Parliament in support of what would become Canada’s first federal bill in support of repair:
“Repair is not only good for the economy and environment, it’s also good for us, as people, and as communities. Every act of repair is embedded with important human values. These include productivist values like learning, skill development, self-determination, digital citizenship, autonomy and also non-productivist values like care, continuity, heritage, hope, mutual support, and meaning-making that together make up the fabric of a richer, more resilient, more livable society and enable us, collectively, to project a more hospitable, habitable, and humane shared future.”
—If repair is so important, why isn’t it more available and accessible?—
If repair is so important, why isn’t it more available and accessible? Repair is impeded by many factors. First, product design is often ambivalent or antagonistic to repair. Hiding access panels, using glue and solder instead of removable fasteners, making “smart” technologies that constrict consumer control, and planned obsolescence are examples of ways that design undermines repair. Second, manufacturers employ business strategies that manipulate consumer choice by obfuscating the true cost of ownership, incentivizing replacement over repair, and capturing downstream repair markets through terms of use, warranties, and other contractual devices. Third, manufacturers create and exploit information and material asymmetries by restricting access to manuals, schematics, diagnostic tools, and proprietary parts and tools necessary to undertake repairs. Fourth, in addition to the contract-based impediments just mentioned, manufacturers bank on lax enforcement of anti-trust laws and deploy technological protection measures (TPMs) such as digital locks, parts pairing, and other forms of technical authentication protected under copyright law to simultaneously lock us out of being able to fix our devices and lock us in to an ongoing dependence on manufacturers for repair (which I critique more fervently here). Finally, manufacturers are skilled choice architects employing a range of tactics and techniques to influence our behavior in ways that suit their profit-driven interests including: undermining confidence in our skills and abilities to fix complex and/or computerized things, making minor incremental design changes to products to capitalize on our tendency for social comparison and FOMO, and exploiting negative externalities that make it easy for us to remain blissfully ignorant of how our habits of consumption harm “invisible others” (often located in regions that have fewer environmental and humans rights protections) who work to mine the resources and manufacture the devices we purchase and use.
Discontent about barriers to repair are giving rise to a growing “Right to Repair” movement in Canada. Researchers, industry stakeholders, non-profit organizations, advocates, members of the public, and policymakers are working together to improve repair literacy and mobilize policy interventions and legal reforms. Last November, the “Right to Repair” earned its first “win” when two copyright reform bills (C-244 & C-294) received royal assent, giving individuals and independent repair service providers the right to circumvent TPMs to fix their devices and enable interoperability. (These protections do not, however, extend to the makers or sellers of circumvention tools.) Quebec recently passed a bill that reforms consumer protection laws in that province to expand implied and express warranties for the sale of goods and restrict planned obsolescence. Other provinces including Ontario and PEI have tabled their own legislation although those efforts have yet to result in reforms. Repair coalition and advocacy groups are actively working to promote the Right to Repair in Canada including CanRepair, an organization I co-founded to help coordinate efforts across the nation and mobilize action from the grassroots to the legislature.
Impediments to repair are prevalent and pernicious in Canada, but they are not impervious to opposition. The economic, environmental, and social imperatives of repair grow in salience as more members of the public, academia, industry, and government become aware of and invested in the issues reflected in the Right to Repair movement. We cannot afford to be broken people, with broken things, living in a broken world. Whether this means turning to a local repair café instead of the dump the next time something you own breaks, or becoming involved in a repair research and advocacy group like CanRepair, or calling your members of Parliament to tell them why repair matters to you, or simply pausing to reflect before making your next purchase, we all have a role to play in resisting the Great Canadian Breakdown.
Cite this article in APA as: Centivany, A. The great Canadian breakdown: What will it take to get a “right to repair” in Canada? (2025, April 30). https://informationmatters.org/2025/05/the-great-canadian-breakdown-what-will-it-take-to-get-a-right-to-repair-in-canada/
