Editorial Comment: NO PROGRESS? NO WONDER.

The important Brake Market will be a focus in April, joined by the Light Truck Performance and Accessories market, and a host of other articles focused on your business. the industry north of the border has nothing to show for its efforts.

Forget, for a minute, the meetings that have been going on for several years with successive Canadian parliaments. Forget for a moment the letters sent, the meetings held, the information sessions conducted on Right to Repair, the petitions signed. We are, in concrete terms, precisely where we were before we started.

While most of the debate has revolved around obtaining original equipment service tools and repair information, the topic of immobilizer technology has been a tough nut to crack, even for the NASTF.

With the mandating of immobilizer technology to keep car thefts down, allowing access raised important questions about how to allow in those who would fix your car, while keeping out those who were fixing to take it.

The nuts and bolts of the big step are banal, to say the least. Currently, technical information is publicly available via the Web on a subscription basis. Until the advent of Secure Data Release Model (SDRM), security-related information was blocked from most parties except dealership personnel because there was no way to verify the security credentials of the requestor. SDRM now has a registry of automotive service and security professionals who have cleared a background check process. Any automaker-website subscribers who want to use security- related information can join the registry. Security-related transactions are validated against the registry and are fulfilled if the requestor’s security credentials are in good standing.

Independent shops would no longer suffer the embarrassment of repairing a car successfully, then having to rely on a car dealer to actually start it.

While I recognize that the work has been going on in the U. S. for a lot longer than it has up here–the SDRM protocols alone have been the topic of negotiations involving the locksmith association, the OEMs, and the aftermarket for the past five years–it still serves as a poignant reminder of the lack of progress we as a Canadian industry have made.

And I have a theory of why: you, and those whom you sell to, simply don’t care about the issue.

It’s not that you don’t care whether you or your customers can effectively and efficiently repair cars today and tomorrow. It’s just that precious few of you care enough to stand up and be counted–four, to be exact.

That was the number who responded to a February fax request I sent to some 40,000 industry members, asking them to report if they had in fact experienced an access problem and a phone number to call. (In the interest of full disclosure, a few received a fax with the wrong phone number, but that was quickly rectified so that everyone got a fax with the right number). There was no form to fill out. No letter to write. Just a phone number to call and leave a message. Precisely four people called.

Now, it is just possible that the industry has become jaded about the issue. Some have told me that nothing will happen until a legal remedy is reached in the U. S. (NASTF is a voluntary arrangement). Believing a legal remedy in the U. S. will carry over here is a dangerous, probably futile path to walk.

Maybe your customers are scared to admit there is a problem at all, for fear their customers will hear about it; or that they rely on a growing grey market to get the tools and information they need.

Regardless, it is impossible to make the case that getting access is of wide industry importance when nobody, save those four, seem to think it’s worth taking less than one minute to say they had run into a problem.

I am, quite honestly, at a loss for words to explain it. And, for anyone who knows me, he announcement by the National Automotive Service Task Force that aftermarket service professionals in the U. S. would be able to gain access to immobilizer codes left me once again feeling like I was on the outside looking in.

While our friends to the south seem to be winning point after point in the so-called battle, with everything from improved access to repair tools and information,

that’s a rarity. — Andrew Ross, Publisher and Editor aross@jobbernews.com