By Gideon Scanlon
In 1689, the newly crowned co-monarchs of the British Isles, Mary Stuart and William of Orange, celebrated taking the throne from Mary’s nephew-slaying father by signing the Bill of Rights into law.
Never again would the law allow for punishments to be issued prior to convictions—nor could these punishments be cruel or unusual. No longer could taxes be levied without the consent of Parliament. The bill even removed most restrictions on freedom of speech. In short, it laid the foundations of the rights still considered inalienable to Britons, Canadians and citizens of the other Commonwealth Realm.
Oddly enough, however, the authors of the bill did not deem it necessary to mention anything about ones right to repair ones own property.
This was, as history has taught us, oversight—one that is causing headaches for Canada’s collision community more than three centuries later.
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Toronto, Ontario — March 8, 2019 — On March 1, Ontario’s Legislature carried a motion to amend the province’s law in order to give people the right to repair their electronic devices. As a result of the change, manufacturers will now have to provide repair facilities with the information they need to perform repairs.
Later that week, members of the Automotive Industry Association of Canada visited Queens Park and petitioned senior ministers—including the premier, Doug Ford—for the same right to repair to vehicle owners.
There is no question in my mind that the AIA was right to make this appeal. What I take issue with is that the right to repair is one that needs to be petitioned for at all!
Let me start this little diatribe by taking a look at what the bill means for the province’s electronics repair facilities. Manufacturers must now provide consumers or repair shop with information needed to make repairs, service they are perfectly entitled to charge for.
This is eminently reasonable. The arguments presented by tech companies against providing such information rely heavily on the idea that by giving this information away, they will make it easier for their intellectual property to be stolen. Unfortunately, this argument forgets that a free and fair society does not limit individual freedoms on the basis that they make it easier to commit crimes—if it was, the cutlery industry would have gone underground years ago.
The truth is, electronic manufacturers want to control the repair industry. They would prefer older devices were replaced by new ones. They would rather have a monopoly on the repair market.
Well, reader, I’m not really sure why I am telling you this. The truth is that you are well aware of the talking points used to stifle the right to repair movement. It is just you tend to hear it being made by auto manufacturers. Just this week, we reported on a European OEM whose American subsidiary announced that it has restricted the sale of its parts to facilities it has certified. While these restrictions will not affect the Canadian market, the Canadian division plans to bring the policy north-of-the-border either later this year or in 2020.
Don’t get me wrong, I keep an open mind when it comes to the value of OEM certification programs. What I object to is the idea that OEMs feel it is their right to carve our repair monopolies. To be fair, that is never the expressed intention of the OEMs that are taking steps to restrict these freedoms.
These steps are generally put forward as measures designed to ensure the OEM can guarantee the safe repair of vehicles. But, like the arguments put forward by tech giants, this one assumes we live in a society that will restrict freedoms on the basis that they may make criminal behaviour easier.
In Canada, putting an unsafe vehicle on the road is illegal. The right to repair one shouldn’t be.
