The way amusement rides are regulated in Canada is unsettling. When a carnival operator crosses a provincial border, they may discover that the safety code governing their equipment has completely changed, with new standards, expectations for inspections, and definitions of what even qualifies as a regulated device. The discrepancy isn’t merely bureaucratic for a sector that transports trailers and Ferris wheels thousands of kilometers every summer. It’s a practical hassle and a growing safety risk.
For many years, Canadian provinces oversaw amusement rides using their own definitions of safety, the majority of which were based on the outdated CAN/CSA Z267 standard from the Canadian Standards Association (CSA). For a while, that framework was useful. However, the CSA code began to show its age as equipment became more sophisticated and new types of attractions appeared, such as aquatic play structures, trampoline parks, zip lines, and stationary wave systems. It was just not intended for a world in which a teenager could enter a trampoline court on a Tuesday afternoon and suffer a fatal injury. Regulators on both sides of the border were alarmed by the estimated 14,000 injuries that occurred at trampoline parks nationwide in 2016 alone.
The most obvious indication of change has been the move toward the American Society for Testing and Materials’ ASTM F2783 standard. The most recent version, ASTM F2783-20, was formally adopted by Alberta in 2017 and went into effect in June 2021. While Ontario’s Technical Standards and Safety Authority had already been functioning under a comparable framework, British Columbia and Saskatchewan also switched to ASTM. However, as recently as 2018, provinces like Quebec, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and the Northwest Territories continued to use the outdated CSA standard. This is where the fracture becomes apparent. That gap is not insignificant. It implies that two provinces may apply essentially different safety standards to the same ride.
The push for harmonization isn’t coming from some abstract policy goal. It is motivated by the challenges that fair operators encounter each season. A ride inspected and licensed in Alberta may need entirely different paperwork and a fresh inspection under different criteria when it shows up in New Brunswick. Operators affiliated with organizations like the Canadian Association of Fairs and Exhibitions have been vocal about the burden this creates, not just in cost but in the confusion it breeds. Something will unavoidably slip through the cracks when licensing requirements, insurance thresholds, and inspection frequencies differ from province to province.
The emergence of attractions that operate in regulatory blind spots is what intensifies the urgency of the discussion. Historically, many provincial codes have excluded go-karts, bungee operations, patron-controlled rides, and muscle-powered devices. For example, only rides with “externally controlled” mechanical systems were regulated in Alberta, effectively leaving a whole category of more recent experiences unregulated. Zip lines were not covered by British Columbia’s Elevating Devices Safety Regulation until 2017, when a number of injury reports made it impossible to overlook the gap. One serious zip-line incident in 2011 was later attributed to staff error — the kind of failure that a standardized training and inspection requirement might have caught earlier.
The system in Ontario provides an example of what a more cohesive strategy might entail. Business owners there must compile detailed dossiers including manufacturer recommendations, proof of liability insurance starting at two million dollars, and signed attestations of operator training. In 2016, the TSSA carried out about 2,000 inspections throughout the province. Although it lacks a federal mechanism for gathering injury data nationally and even Ontario exempts some devices, the system is comparatively strong. The final point is more important than it may seem because, in the absence of a shared database, provinces are effectively making safety decisions in the dark because they are unable to recognize patterns that cut across jurisdictional boundaries.
The industry as a whole seems prepared for convergence. The ASTM standard covers device categories that the CSA code did not foresee, making it more extensive than previous standards. However, adoption is still uneven, and the federal government has shown little desire to intervene in areas that the provinces believe fall under their purview. For the time being, the momentum is being driven by industry associations and provincial regulators who are working ride by ride, code by code, to close the gaps before the next season and incident force the problem.
