When a smartphone screen cracks or a washing machine controller fails, the cheapest fix is often no fix at all: replacement frequently undercuts repair once parts, shipping, and labour are tallied. That arithmetic, multiplied across millions of households, helps explain why Canadians discard hundreds of thousands of tonnes of electronics each year, and it has pushed "right to repair" rules — which would oblige manufacturers to supply parts, tools, and documentation to independent shops — onto legislative agendas in Ottawa and several provinces.

Lena Okafor, who directs the Open Repair Coalition, argues the issue is fundamentally about restoring a market that manufacturers dismantled. Independent fixers once handled everything from radios to tractors, she notes, until software locks and proprietary fasteners made many devices serviceable only by their makers. Okafor wants binding rules with teeth: minimum parts-availability periods, capped pricing for service manuals, and penalties for firms whose products disable themselves after outside repairs. Voluntary pledges, in her experience, evaporate the moment a product line is discontinued.

Daniel Roy-Tremblay, a spokesperson for an association of electronics manufacturers, accepts that discarded devices are an environmental liability — his members, he points out, already fund several recycling programs — but contends that mandated openness solves the wrong problem. Most devices are retired not because repair is impossible, he says, but because owners want newer features. He warns that compelling companies to publish diagnostic software would invite counterfeit parts and security breaches, and he favours expanding manufacturer-certified refurbishing networks, which return tested devices to the market under warranty.

Margaret Hsu, an environmental economist at a Prairie university, finds merit and blind spots on both sides. Repair mandates, her research suggests, modestly extend product lifespans but accomplish little if consumers still perceive repair as inconvenient. Refurbishing programs, meanwhile, capture only the small fraction of devices that owners bother to return. Hsu’s preferred lever is financial: charge producers fees scaled to how difficult their products are to fix, so that repairability is rewarded at the design stage rather than litigated afterward. A company that glues its batteries in place, she argues, should carry the disposal burden that choice creates — a calculation no manual or refurbishing depot can undo.