Evidence of meeting #43 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vehicle.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Brian Kingston  President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association
Derek Willshire  Regional Vice-President, Canada, LKQ Corporation
Tyler Blake Threadgill  Vice-President, Government Affairs, LKQ Corporation
John Schmeiser  President, North American Equipment Dealers Association
Eric Wareham  Vice-President, Government Affairs, North American Equipment Dealers Association
Ian Jack  Vice-President, Public Affairs, Canadian Automobile Association
Raj Malik  Vice-President, Federal Affairs and National Strategic Partnerships, Medtech Canada
Mia Spiegelman  Vice-President, Regulatory Affairs, Medtech Canada
Jason Kerr  Managing Director, Government Relations, Canadian Automobile Association

12:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound

Thank you very much, Mr. Malik.

We'll now turn to MP Vis for six minutes.

12:15 p.m.

Conservative

Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC

Actually, Mr. Chair, I will be speaking first.

12:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound

Okay, Mr. Généreux. You have the floor.

12:15 p.m.

Conservative

Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC

Mr. Malik, can you quickly explain to me again the link between the bill and the death of the daughter of Terence Young, a former colleague with whom I sat in the house from 2009 to 2011? What specific link do you see between medical equipment and this bill?

12:15 p.m.

Vice-President, Federal Affairs and National Strategic Partnerships, Medtech Canada

Raj Malik

I will ask my colleague to comment on that.

12:15 p.m.

Mia Spiegelman Vice-President, Regulatory Affairs, Medtech Canada

Thank you, Mr. Malik.

When Vanessa's Law was enacted, it had different sections. One of them talks about the safety of the medical device throughout its life cycle. As Mr. Malik mentioned, it could be seven to 15 years.

In the medical device industry, they implemented it such that now manufacturers, importers, distributors and regulated third party service providers are required to provide annual summary reports around adverse events. If the adverse events cause unintended increased risk, they have to report it to Health Canada. Other such reports are now required in medical device regulations.

In regard to the act and how it's linked, third party service providers that are not regulated do not have this requirement. Therefore, there is a gap in this area, and this has been brought up to Health Canada as well.

Thank you.

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC

Have you proposed or do you plan to propose any amendments to the bill to ensure that third parties who repair medical equipment have the same responsibilities or options as manufacturers?

I understand what you want to do, your intention is very good, and the example you cite is particularly telling, but are you proposing any amendments?

12:20 p.m.

Vice-President, Regulatory Affairs, Medtech Canada

Mia Spiegelman

Yes.

Go ahead, Mr. Malik.

12:20 p.m.

Vice-President, Federal Affairs and National Strategic Partnerships, Medtech Canada

Raj Malik

Yes, we will be putting forward an amendment with respect to that.

12:20 p.m.

Vice-President, Regulatory Affairs, Medtech Canada

Mia Spiegelman

In addition, we have provided feedback to Health Canada around this area.

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC

Thank you very much.

I'd now like to turn to the representatives from CAA.

You have automobile clubs across Canada, including in Quebec. You have a total of nearly seven million members, so your association is very well known. Today, you are representing those seven million motorists, and you support this bill.

Has your association presented, or does it intend to present, any amendments to the bill or does it find it acceptable as it stands?

In other words, would you like to see the bill improved or enhanced?

12:20 p.m.

Vice-President, Public Affairs, Canadian Automobile Association

Ian Jack

Have we presented any amendments? No.

Are we happy with the law as written? Yes.

Do we acknowledge that there could be some legitimate exemptions—like maybe from our colleagues here—that should be considered? Sure. I'm not an expert in medical technology, so I wouldn't try to speak for them.

I would say two things about any exemption process that the committee might consider through amendment. The first is that every industry will line up and claim that it is worthy of an exemption. Some will actually be worthy; some may be less worthy.

I think this committee probably hears from the brand name and generic pharmaceutical industries from time to time. You will know that they just spend all their time in court arguing over how long various periods should be. I would hope the committee would want to avoid that in any amendments it might consider on this bill. Think carefully about how to narrow the possibility of getting an exemption.

If I may, sir, there was a prior testimony that perhaps those who want to circumvent a digital lock should have to make their case. I would suggest the onus should be the other way around. If you are about to pass a law of general applicability that allows for the circumvention of digital locks for legitimate purposes, it should be the industry that says that we can't touch its software that should have to make its case.

Thank you.

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC

I understand what you're saying.

My fear, based on what witnesses have told us, is that it's the beginning of the end for our neighbourhood garages in our villages and municipalities, both in the agricultural world and the automotive world. This really scares me. It's going as far as having auto parts engraved so they can be used only once, so they cannot be replaced by any other part, not even a part from the very company that makes these parts. This means that manufacturers are really pushing the envelope to maintain control of the whole thing, if I can put it that way.

I fear that one day, if we don't change anything, we won't have access to all the local garages in each municipality. Is my fear justified?

12:20 p.m.

Vice-President, Public Affairs, Canadian Automobile Association

Ian Jack

We share that concern, absolutely. That's why we support this legislation. We think it would be, in terms of our industry, a small step forward in making sure that we don't end up in that huis clos of having to go to a dealer that is maybe 200 or 400 kilometres away, depending on the vehicle you've purchased.

As well, I would say that CASIS—and we hear about CASIS—to me is a perfect example of another piège that I would encourage the committee to think about in any amendments that it considers.

What a wonderful story that the automotive industry and the aftermarket voluntarily got together and made an agreement to share information 15 years ago. Well, since then—and it's unfortunate that Mr. Masse is not here today, because he's been on this committee forever and could tell you—year after year, the same story is heard, which is that one side says CASIS is wonderful and working perfectly and the other side says it's irreparably broken.

What is the truth of the matter? We're a third party in this; we don't have line of sight either. However, that voluntary agreement has no review mechanism, no audit mechanism, and there's no third party that looks at it that anybody can go to review it. That's why we've ended up in that situation today.

We have heard talk of—and we could accept—voluntary agreements to potentially share information among industries in order to not be subject to Bill C-244. We think that's where some would like to go with this. We would urge some caution there. If that's where we end up, we think we need to make sure, whether it's ISED or some other body, that there is a regular review.

If a party to a voluntary agreement has an issue with it, what are they supposed to do about it? Again, that's why we don't like what we would consider reverse onus from a previous witness. There's an imbalance here of economic power between an OEM and most in the aftermarket.

Our friends at LKQ may have a bit of money, but they don't have as much money as the multinational auto companies, and anybody else in that industry is going to be even smaller. To us, asking somebody like that to have hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of lawyers and spend years in court to argue about whether they should have access would be a mistake.

12:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound

Thank you very much, Mr. Jack.

Thank you very much, Mr. Généreux.

I now give the floor to Ms. Lapointe for six minutes.

12:25 p.m.

Liberal

Viviane LaPointe Liberal Sudbury, ON

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to ask Mr. Jack a question.

You mentioned in your opening statement that your association did some polling of its members and that a significant number of Canadians indicated their concerns with limited options and lack of choice. Can you tell us more about what you heard from members?

12:25 p.m.

Vice-President, Public Affairs, Canadian Automobile Association

Ian Jack

Absolutely. It was not just members, I might add. We have 6.8 million members, but when we do polling, we poll all Canadians. We ask them whether they are members so we know what the difference is, if there is one, but there isn't on this issue. Over two-thirds of Canadians support the right of the independent repair industry, through garages, to have access to that software.

Again, you'll hear differing stories about how easy that access is and how complete that access is today. In our view, the bill before you is ensuring that we don't have another impediment, and it's about ensuring that in the future, digital locks don't become an impediment.

To the point made by Monsieur Généreux, the industry is getting tighter and tighter and tougher and tougher and more technologically driven. The importance to the OEMs of the repair model, and therefore that software, is only going to grow with time.

We already see that when new manufacturers come along, like Tesla, they don't use dealerships. They're company owned. That's been a long-term trend in the industry. I think it would be fair to say that if the OEMs were creating the industry from scratch today, they wouldn't set up independent dealer networks that they end up getting, you know.....

One of the things they love about wireless transmission of data is that it allows them, for the first time ever, to establish a direct binary relationship with the owner of a vehicle. If you think about it, I would suggest that if it's a new vehicle, most of us have a relationship with a dealership, and if not, then with a garage, but not with the OEM itself.

That's partly what this is about, this brave new world for the manufacturers. We think their pressure to hold that data will only increase. We want to make sure that it's more widely available, as we said, to the benefit of consumers, in particular on price when it comes to repair.

12:25 p.m.

Liberal

Viviane LaPointe Liberal Sudbury, ON

This isn't a uniquely Canadian issue. Are there any international examples we could refer to regarding the impact of this bill? I'm thinking in particular of countries like the U.S. or Australia.

12:25 p.m.

Vice-President, Public Affairs, Canadian Automobile Association

Ian Jack

Yes, and my colleague Jason can speak more to this. He is, for his sins, on a quarterly call at 6 a.m. so we can all be awake at the same time—the Australians, the Europeans, us and so on. We talk regularly about this issue and we do monitor the international situation.

From our perspective at least, I think it's fair to say that internationally, the auto industry tends to line up to slow down any access to data. This has been the example in Massachusetts, where a citizens' referendum was passed and so on.

Let me turn it over to Jason for a little bit more on that.

November 14th, 2022 / 12:30 p.m.

Jason Kerr Managing Director, Government Relations, Canadian Automobile Association

Yes, thank you.

In Australia, there has been an agreement. The agreement is not really working very well and has been delayed for many, many years. There are no manufacturers that make vehicles that are based in Australia, and that has been quite an impediment, because they don't pay quite a lot of attention to the rules. Things have been quite delayed there.

The EU is still working on their law. They're still working through things on right to repair. They do not have a right-to-repair bill per se at this moment. I can't say that there's anything that they've done on digital locks that I can think of, but I can check on that and get back to you, Ms. Lapointe.

Also, in the United States, as my colleague Mr. Jack mentioned, there is a bill that's been passed in Massachusetts to allow for right to repair. There is a movement to try to pass a federal or a national right-to-repair piece of legislation so that there's not a patchwork of legislation across the states. However, it is being held up at great length by the manufacturers, and in fact the manufacturers spent close to $25 million on an advertising campaign to push back on right to repair in advance of the referendum that happened a couple of years ago now.

I think what we can say is that the right-to-repair bill that occurred here 15 years ago in Canada was voluntary, but it was the first of its kind in the world, and it was great to see that happen. It was great to see that everyone came together, but there wasn't an oversight mechanism. There wasn't anything. No one was in control. There wasn't someone you could come back to if it wasn't working to ask who was going to do something about it.

Today one side of the sector says it's not working, and then the automobile manufacturers say everything's working perfectly. It's not necessarily our place to sit here and tell you it is or isn't working, but clearly there is a gap and clearly there's a mechanism that should have been put in place but wasn't.

Thank you.

12:30 p.m.

Liberal

Viviane LaPointe Liberal Sudbury, ON

Thank you, Mr. Kerr.

Mr. Malik, I'd like to pick up on what my colleague Bernard Généreux was talking to you about, some of the amendments you may be proposing. We know that there are concerns that the right to repair may lead to some safety risks with medical devices. I believe that in your statement, you stated that it has the potential to undermine the safety of medical devices. In your estimation, are there specific categories of medical devices you would like to see excluded from this bill?

12:30 p.m.

Vice-President, Federal Affairs and National Strategic Partnerships, Medtech Canada

Raj Malik

Let me start, and then I'll ask my colleague to weigh in.

As you're probably aware, medical devices in Canada are classified according to category and level of invasiveness. There are a number of medical devices that do not require any sort of repair or maintenance, and that would include products such as needles, syringes and bandages. All of those would be excluded. Devices that have a hardware or software component to them would be the ones that we would be most concerned about in terms of a safety risk.

12:30 p.m.

Liberal

Viviane LaPointe Liberal Sudbury, ON

Please go ahead.

12:30 p.m.

Vice-President, Regulatory Affairs, Medtech Canada

Mia Spiegelman

I'm fully aligned with my colleague's feedback. In addition to what he mentioned, any medical device that has software, hardware or a combination of both of them would be something we would seek exclusion for. It doesn't have to be a specific MRI machine or any high-tech device; it could be a blood pressure cuff that you have at home to monitor your blood pressure if you have high blood pressure, for example. For us, it's any medical device that is not single use, is sterile and has equipment, software or a combination that would need to be serviced, maintained and repaired.

12:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound

Thank you very much, Ms. Lapointe.

I now give the floor to Mr. Lemire for six minutes.