Minister of Transport Marc Garneau introducing new drone rules on March 16. Credit: Frank Gunn, CP

Canada’s recreational drone rules overreach - Visualized

Earlier this month, the Canadian government announced new restrictions on recreational drone use (although as we’ll see later, the effects go beyond recreational uses).

The key feature of the new rules is the ban on flying within nine kilometres of somewhere aircraft take off or land. The actual rule is “closer than nine km from the centre of an aerodrome (any airport, heliport, seaplane base or anywhere that aircraft take-off and land)”. What does this actually mean?

I was able to pull location data (web scraping to the rescue) for all the aerodromes in Canada, and visualize the 9km exclusion areas created by the new rules. You can try the map for yourself — find the link at the end of the post.

There are almost 2000 aerodromes in Canada. When you add up all those 9km circles, what’s left?

In Metro Vancouver, nothing:

Vancouver 9km drone aerodrome exclusions

Island of Montreal, Nothing:

Montreal 9km drone aerodrome exclusions

Toronto:

Toronto 9km drone aerodrome exclusions

Waterloo, not quite as bad but Waterloo and Kitchener proper are still completely no-fly:

Waterloo 9km drone aerodrome exclusions

Calgary:

Calgary 9km drone aerodrome exclusions

You get the picture!

The drone restrictions announced have the practical effect of banning recreational drone use for the vast majority of the Canadian population.

Impacts beyond recreation: Our next generation of companies

The effects of a de-facto recreational ban are not just felt in recreational uses. Drones and their applications, like many emerging technologies, are powered by a combo of smartphone-derived computing and battery components with software.

Software developers and entrepreneurs make the software that makes those applications go — and in a Canada that is 82% urbanized (2015), software developers are more concentrated in cities than most Canadians. No-fly means no-build for developers with ideas. That’s unfortunate, because a developer with an idea is the way tech companies, including today’s tech giants, get built today — and the global drone market size will reach USD$6 billion in 2017, with even greater value created in the applications of these drones.

Parts of the government have recognized that in the tech sector today, this is how companies are created. In recent years new federal programs to support startups such as the Canada Accelerator and Incubator Program (CAIP) funding, the Venture Capital Action Plan, and Canada’s Start-up Visa Program have shown serious efforts to promote Canadian tech. This support has helped speed the growth of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal as globally recognized centres for software startups.

However the new de-facto drone ban shows that this perspective on growing Canadian opportunity in tech is not shared equally across the government. Transport Canada we’re looking at you.

A technologist setting out to create new uses for drones could:

Look at the Drone Ban Map, make the rational calculation, and apply their skills to greener pastures Take their chances and violate the regulations (nobody should do this— as absurd and overreaching as the new rules are) in areas that common sense, and Transport Canada’s rules of a month ago, assess as safe, or Take their idea and build it somewhere else like the US or Asia.

Why not use the commercial rules exemption some may ask? Simply comply with the 61 conditions of the commercial exemption, including notifying the Minister in writing, and ante up $100,000 liability insurance.

While many of the conditions are simply burdensome, the liability insurance requirement ends the discussion for the typical technologist with an idea.