Right to Repair

New Poll Says 75% of Canadians Support Right to Repair

Canadian flag blowing in the wind

Our California-based editorial team has some basketball-related beef with Canada right now. But we might just need to look past our differences—the results of a poll released today revealed that 75% of Canadians support Right to Repair legislation, with only 3% saying they oppose. I guess when it comes to fixing things, we’re all in this together.

Innovative Research Group, along with some help from OpenMedia and yours truly, polled 1,691 Canadians on their experiences repairing broken devices and their level of support for Right to Repair legislation.

Familiarity with Right to Repair in Canada is still relatively low: A little over half (51%) of those polled responded that they hadn’t heard of Right to Repair before taking the survey, while 25% indicated that they are at least somewhat familiar. However, not only did 75% of respondents say they’re in support of legislation—45% of those polled even said that they strongly support Right to Repair.

Percent of Canadians who support Right to Repair

Perhaps this enthusiastic support for Right to Repair without awareness is due to repair’s everyday relevance: A whopping 76% of respondents said they had discarded a broken device because of a repairable problem. 44% had replaced or discarded a device because of a broken or cracked screen, and 42% had scrapped a device because of a weak or dead battery.

The survey also indicated that support for Right to Repair is consistent across party lines: 79% of Liberals said they support the proposal, while 76% of New Democrats and 67% of Conservatives say they’re in support. This defies standard public policy trends in Canada: For the average public policy, levels of support and opposition both increase as people gain familiarity with the issue. But Innovative Research Group’s survey indicated that while support for Right to Repair increases with familiarity, opposition does not. All of this confirms what we already know: that Right to Repair is applicable to everyone, eh.

Percentage of Canadians who have discarded a repariable device

This survey follows a similar poll on Right to Repair for US farm equipment published last month, which yielded comparable results: 71 percent of Americans favor Right to Repair laws, while only 7 percent oppose them. The survey, conducted by YouGov and Data for Progress, also found consistent support across political affiliation and location size.

Two Right to Repair Bills were introduced and tabled in Canada earlier this year, and an OpenMedia petition calling on Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development to introduce a national Right to Repair bill garnered almost 12,000 signatures. In the US, 20 states introduced Right to Repair legislation this year, and New York’s bill is still in an open comment period until June 19.

John Ray, Senior Political Analyst with YouGov, told Medium that, in his experience polling Americans, an increasing number of people have decided that “corporations have too much power in the modern economy.” iFixit is further proof that consumers want to maintain the things they own, and that with access to the right parts, tools, and instructions, they’re more than capable of doing it themselves. And now, we can add Canadians to our growing list of repair renegades.

View the full-length survey results.