What happened to the "Right to Repair" bill?
A poll shows 3 out of 4 Canadians support Right-to-Repair law. It's mainly for smartphones and electronics. Often times, you have one simple problem and you are forced to replace it. Like a cracked screen, the phone is perfectly usable otherwise, but they made it so expensive to repair. In the case of Apple, they may give you a new phone and destroy the old one. It's a terrible environmental issue.
The bill would force manufacturers to:
- Provide consumers or electronics repair shops with replacement parts, software and tools for diagnosing, maintaining or repairing their products, for a fair price.
- Provide electronic documents such as repair manuals for free.
- Reset any electronic security that may disable the device during diagnosis, maintenance or repair.
Not to mentioned that in the design world, we think that if you can't repair or mod an item, you don't truly own it. You are essentially renting it.
Lately, the practice has spreading to large home appliances and even farm machinery. At first I thought it was inevitable due to raising labor cost. But I was talking to a repairman and he said he replaced his 4 year old fridge because it was too expensive. And the labor was free for him! They made the parts too expensive to worth it.
I feel like this is one of those issue we here on SC all care about, but don't know what to do about it. :icon_scratch:
