Canada's 2024–2025 right-to-repair amendments, and what they don't change about your warranty

Between November 2024 and June 2025, three separate federal changes gave "right to repair" real legal teeth in Canada for the first time — two amendments to the Copyright Act and a rewrite of the Competition Act's refusal-to-deal rule. It's worth being precise about what each one actually does, because none of them is a warranty law, and none of them settles the specific question of whether using an independent shop can void your coverage.

What was illegal before: bypassing a digital lock, even to fix your own thing

Canada's Copyright Act bans circumventing a "technological protection measure" (TPM) — a digital lock controlling access to copyrighted software embedded in a device. Before 2024, that ban applied even when the only reason for bypassing the lock was to diagnose or repair the device itself, with no copyright infringement intended. A vehicle's onboard diagnostic system, a smart appliance's firmware, or an equipment control unit locked behind a TPM could put an independent repairer in copyright-law jeopardy for doing routine diagnostic or repair work a dealer's own technician could do freely.

Bill C-244 and Bill C-294: two permanent exceptions, both enacted the same day

Bill C-244, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (diagnosis, maintenance and repair), and Bill C-294, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability), both received royal assent on November 7, 2024. C-244 adds a new section 41.121, permitting TPM circumvention specifically for the diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of a program or a device in which it's embedded. C-294 adds a parallel exception permitting circumvention to make a program or device interoperable with another program, device, or component. Unlike the US, where equivalent repair exemptions are temporary, product-specific, and have to be renewed by the Librarian of Congress every three years, Canada's two exceptions are permanent, written directly into the statute.

What the copyright exceptions still don't permit

Both exceptions cover a repairer performing the circumvention themselves for a legitimate diagnosis, maintenance, repair, or interoperability purpose. Neither one legalizes offering circumvention as a paid service to others, or manufacturing and distributing dedicated circumvention tools — those activities remain restricted under the Copyright Act's separate anti-trafficking provisions. An independent shop can now legally bypass a lock to fix a specific customer's vehicle or appliance; it still can't legally sell a circumvention tool or service to other repairers.

The Competition Act got its own repair-specific rewrite in 2024

Separately, Bill C-59 — the Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023, royal assent June 20, 2024 — rewrote the Competition Act's refusal-to-deal provision, section 75, to specifically cover a manufacturer's refusal to supply the "means of diagnosis or repair": diagnostic and repair information, technical updates, diagnostic software or tools, related documentation, and service parts. Where such a refusal is having, or is likely to have, an adverse effect on competition, the Competition Tribunal can now order the manufacturer to make those means of diagnosis or repair available on terms the Tribunal sets — a lever that didn't exist in this form before 2024.

Since June 20, 2025: an independent repairer doesn't need the Commissioner to bring the case

As with the deceptive-marketing changes covered in our Competition Act warranty-marketing page, amendments in force since June 20, 2025 let a private party seek the Competition Tribunal's own leave to bring a section 75 refusal-to-deal case directly — including one over refused diagnostic tools or repair information — rather than relying solely on the Commissioner of Competition to pursue it. The leave threshold was lowered at the same time.

What none of this actually settles

These three changes give an independent repairer real tools to get at the diagnostic information and digital-lock access a repair job needs. They do not, on their own, create a general rule against a manufacturer or warranty provider voiding coverage because a consumer used an independent shop — that specific question sits in provincial consumer-protection and contract law, is genuinely less settled in Canada than in the US (where the FTC enforces a direct anti-tie-in rule under Magnuson-Moss — see our extended warranty vs. manufacturer warranty page), and is being addressed unevenly province by province rather than by one federal rule. Don't assume Canada's new right-to-repair statutes already answer the warranty-voiding question; ask the specific provider in writing what does and doesn't affect your coverage before assuming a repair shop's legal right to do the diagnostic work also protects your contract.

Get the diagnostic access question and the warranty question answered separately: "can this shop legally access what it needs to diagnose my car or appliance" and "does using this shop affect my warranty or service contract" are two different questions under two different bodies of law in Canada right now — don't let a confident answer to one stand in for the other.