Associated Equipment Distributors (AED), a major Canada-U.S. trade association representing the heavy equipment industry, registered a second lobbyist to oppose Manitoba’s proposed “right to repair” law.

Provincial Bill 15 would require equipment suppliers to provide buyers with the diagnostic devices, repair manuals, replacement parts and tools needed to fix their products within a reasonable price range and time frame.

Supporters of the bills say giving consumers access to these resources makes it easier for them to hire any repair person to fix their machinery, instead of having to use a company-approved technician, which can cost more.

Such laws are especially important to the agriculture sector, as farmers argue machinery companies use restrictive repair rules to make more money from machinery that breaks easily and is costly to fix.

Chicago-based AED, which includes more than 800 equipment suppliers for the construction, mining, forestry, transportation and agriculture industries, is strongly opposed.

The group wants to “schedule meetings regarding provincial right to repair policies to exclude agricultural and construction heavy equipment,” according to a lobbying registration filed June 27.

AED regularly opposes “right to repair” proposals which, it says, “mandate unfettered access to critical emissions and safety functions, threatening the environment and the well-being of operators, maintenance providers and the public.”

The group has successfully lobbied to remove or limit right to repair provisions in U.S. federal and state laws.

The European Union was one of the first jurisdictions to propose formalizing the right to repair into law. A directive issued in 2023 aimed to promote “more sustainable consumption by increasing repair and reuse of goods,” and ensure “that consumers have easier and cheaper options to repair products that are technically repairable.”

Canada introduced its own federal laws to enable the right to repair in 2024, which the AED opposed. Those laws amended federal copyright law to require manufacturers to remove “digital locks” on devices so they could only be fixed by company-approved technicians.

Quebec passed its own right to repair law in October 2023. Other provinces are now catching on. AED’s site points to Ontario’s Bill 91, the Right to Repair Act, as a target of its advocacy, and a consultant is registered to lobby the province on AED’s behalf.

It is also registered to lobby in Saskatchewan to “oppose any amendments that would create a right to modify equipment in the area of diagnosis, maintenance and repair,” after a province-led consultation about implementing a right to repair law last year.

A consultation report released by the Saskatchewan Law Reform Commission about how a law could be implemented was released in October of last year. As yet, no law has been proposed.

On June 29, James Ball, the same consultant lobbyist who registered on behalf of AED in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, also registered to lobby in Prince Edward Island. While there is no bill on the books in that province, advocates for the legislation have started pushing for a law after a previous attempt failed in 2024.

AED did not respond to the IJF's request for comment.

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