The Canadian Repair Declaration

To Canadian policymakers, governments, manufacturers, and industry leaders:

We are volunteers, workers, researchers, and committed repair advocates who represent the grassroots of the Right to Repair movement across Canada, including Repair Cafés, tool libraries, academics, consumer advocacy organizations, farmers, independent repair technicians, resale/thrift shops, and concerned citizens.

We are advocating for a future in which repair is the norm rather than the exception. We are not alone in this. Our support for a Right to Repair is shared with everyday people, policymakers, researchers, and experts around the world. The consequences of the premature failure and abandonment of today’s products – many of which are computerized or made unnecessarily difficult to repair – have prompted the Right to Repair to become a global movement.

Through repair cafés and grassroots organizing, we have seen firsthand the multifaceted benefits of repairability in Canada. It can significantly reduce environmentally harmful waste, bolster Canada’s economy through secondary markets and local jobs, all while empowering individuals and groups toward greater solidarity and support of one another.

We believe that repairability and interoperability are particularly important for the survival, resilience, and self-determination of Canada’s rural, remote, and Indigenous communities.

The obstacles to repair are no accident. Concentration, incumbency, and regulatory capture have enabled manufacturers to prioritize profits like never before, at the expense of a habitable, hospitable, and humane shared future.  The market inertia granted to product manufacturers, exclusivity of our intellectual property system, and absence of regulatory intervention has enabled the reality in which we now find ourselves.

We believe that relying on grassroots efforts alone to chart a new path is insufficient. We believe that the time has come for government and policymakers at all levels to envision a future in which repairability is a key component of a sustainable, responsible, and thriving  Canadian economy, environment, and society.

We ask Canadian federal, provincial, municipal, and territorial authorities to join our movement restoring the Right to Repair in Canada by making repair affordable, accessible, and available through a recalibration of our intellectual property laws, market competition rules, consumer protection laws, as well as the establishment of manufacturing standards and labeling requirements.

We believe that building the future we desire requires repairing what is in front of us. We ask you to join us in our call to make repair accessible and within the means of all Canadians.