`Right to repair' should be the law of the land
Change would ease pressure on both pocketbooks and landfills, Meera Nair says.
The proposed, and soon to be passed Budget Act is necessarily broad as Canada finds itself battling challenges on multiple fronts: COVID -19, environmental impact, inflation, and the tectonic disruption of the rules-based order the world has enjoyed for over 70 years. Thus child care, climate action, defence, housing, immigration, productivity, reconciliation, and much more received attention and dollars.
Along with these goals, over 40 amendments to various statutes were proposed within the Budget Act, including intention to amend the Copyright Act as per American wishes. This is hardly relevant to the multiple emergencies we currently face. But because of the Canada– United States–mexico Agreement, we must lengthen our copyright term from the international requirement of lifetime of the creator plus 50 years to lifetime plus 70 years.
Presumably, the federal government is using the budget to expedite term extension, although it has chosen not to mitigate the negative effects of term extension as was called for by students, educators, librarians and its own justice minister.
If expediency is the goal, this government could have included a productive copyright amendment that would serve its own agenda by making life more affordable for Canadians and reduce environmental degradation. An existing private member's bill, C-244 introduced by MP Wilson Miao on Feb. 8, 2022, is critical to fostering Canadians' opportunities to repair anything that relies on embedded software.
Such repair is currently impeded by the Copyright Act's broad protection of digital locks around copyrighted content, including software. An allowance for lock-breaking is necessary if consumers are to enjoy the maximum lifespan of their personal property. Miao's bill sought to achieve this with a modest amendment to the Copyright Act — one that permits lock-breaking but is limited to the “diagnosis, maintenance or repair of a product in which the program is embedded.”
At present, if a device itself breaks, Canadians are either at the mercy of expensive manufacturer-sanctioned repair services or expected to jettison their possession and purchase anew.
Canadians are increasingly aware of and frustrated by their lack of legal means to repair their own property. In a 2019 survey, conducted by Innovative Research Group for Open Media, 76 per cent of the respondents “have discarded or replaced a broken device because of a repairable issue.” Notably, this was pre-pandemic, before the shortage of microcomputer chips (and supply chain issues in general) had affected consumers, thus making purchasing more challenging.
The lack of ability for repair not only has consequences for Canadian pocketbooks but also for the environment; speaking to his colleagues on April 8, 2022, Miao emphasized “Canadians are not only paying more for the products they are using; they are also using them for less time. Ever-increasing numbers of products are ending up in landfills.”
This government is clearly aware of these challenges. The mandate letter for the minister of innovation, science and industry included the task of implementing “a `right to repair' to extend the life of home appliances, particularly electronics, by requiring manufacturers to supply repair manuals and spare parts, and by amending the Copyright Act to allow for the repair of digital devices and systems.”
The minister of environment and climate change was similarly tasked with implementing “a `right to repair' to extend the life of home appliances, particularly electronics, and require businesses to inform Canadians of the environmental impacts of consumer products.”
Bill C-244 is not the first showing of interest in repair of software-controlled devices in Canada. It is identical to its predecessor, Bill C-272, which was introduced by MP Brian
May in February 2021; that bill reached second reading on June 2, 2021, through unanimous support in the House of Commons. In our particularly fractured state of politics, unanimity speaks volumes. However, that progress was halted by the fall election.
Given this government's own agenda and instructions to its ministers, with a viable solution at hand, Canadians can only wonder why such a beneficial measure was left out of the Budget Act.