Quote:
Originally Posted by Wilson
...You do, however, need a license if you wish to transmit on any frequencies outside of the Citizen's Band (CB), Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS), Family Radio Service (FRS), and General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS).
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All of the above is correct with one exception. The 5 VHF frequencies set aside by the FCC for MURS ops are not similarly allocated in Canada and thus are
not available license-exempt to users north of the 49th.
Additionally, Section 4 of the Radiocommunication Act states in part,
4. (1) No person shall, except under and in
accordance with a radio authorization, install,
operate or possess radio apparatus, other than(a) radio apparatus exempted by or under
regulations made under paragraph 6(1)(m);
or
(b) radio apparatus that is capable only of
the reception of broadcasting and that is not
a distribution undertaking.
(2) No person shall manufacture, import,
distribute, lease, offer for sale or sell any radio
apparatus, interference-causing equipment or
radio-sensitive equipment for which a technical
acceptance certificate is required under this
Act, otherwise than in accordance with such a
certificate.
(3) No person shall manufacture, import,
distribute, lease, offer for sale or sell any radio
apparatus, interference-causing equipment or
radio-sensitive equipment for which technical
standards have been established under paragraph
6(1)(a), unless the apparatus or equipment
complies with those standards.
R.S., 1985, c. R-2, s. 4; 1989, c. 17, s. 4; 1991, c. 11, s. 82.
In a nutshell what this means is:
ALL radios, except for HAM-only ones,
must be certified against a Radio Standards Specification or have a Technical Acceptance Certificate before they can be manufactured (except for export-only), imported, sold or leased by or to anyone in Canada. Since none of these Kenwood knock-off radios like Linton, Puxing, etc. from China possess either a RSS or TA certificate, plus the fact they are not strictly speaking "amateur radio equipment", that makes them illegal to possess in Canada as per Section 4 -- no radio authorization & no certification.
Operation of
any radio is subject to individual licensing unless exempted by regulation, and in order to acquire a license, the radio apparatus must be certified or have a TA (except for ham gear). For certain license-exempt services like FRS, GMRS, GRS (CB), no individual license is required provided the operator uses equipment certified to operate as license-exempt within those bands...in this case certified against RSS-210. That means, even if you were to take a commercial-grade Motorola GP300 radio for example, which is in fact RSS-119 certified, and program it for operation on the FRS/GMRS bands, you'd still be illegal. The reason being is that the radio does not nor was ever intended to meet license-exempt criteria under RSS-210, and even though it has met a Canadian certification standard (RSS-119) thus satisfying S.4.(3), because no license would ever be issued to operate within FRS/GMRS with non-RSS-210 gear, you would not receive a S.4.(1) "radio authorization" thus you're operation becomes contrary to the Act.
Practically speaking however, the odds of you being caught using a non-certified radio in the FRS/GMRS frequency bands and read the Riot Act are pretty slim unless you're causing harmful interference to other services outside FRS/GMRS (radio technical malfunction - spurious radiation) and someone complains to IC. However, if you decide to use one of these un-certified radios, but also decide to use it on some "clear" frequency of your own picking (bad idea), you run the very real risk of causing interference which results in a complaint call and a not very pleased Inspector from the local IC office banging on your door sooner or later.
The very best way to avoid this type of unpleasantness is to either:
- get your ham ticket and use ham gear on ham frequencies only
- stick with certified, license-exempt, "blister-pack" FRS/GMRS radios like most people do
- purchase RSS-119 certified, commercial-grade radios and submit a license application to your local IC office for a land-mobile frequency assignment and pay the yearly license fee for each radio
Ready...FIRE...Aim!
'Fly