On September 17, the Canadian International Trade Tribunal ended the duties Canada had been charging on solar modules from China. It came ahead of the December 9 date it was expected to decide by. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) will no longer collect them, which closes out measures that had been in place since 2015.
How the Duties Worked
A duty is a charge added when goods cross the border. The company bringing the product into Canada pays it, and it ends up built into what the buyer pays. Two kinds applied here. Anti-dumping duties are added when a country's producers sell into Canada at unfairly low prices, and countervailing duties are added to offset government subsidies behind those prices.
The size of the anti-dumping duty depended on the exporter. For exporters without their own assigned rate, CBSA set it at 154.4% of the export price, with a countervailing duty of 0.34 RMB per watt on top.
Here's what that looks like on a $50,000 panel order from China, at that top rate. The anti-dumping duty alone would have been about $77,200, before the per-watt countervailing duty. The order would have cost around $127,200.
Now the same order carries no anti-dumping or countervailing duty. Canada's customs tariff lists the ordinary duty on modules as free, so the border charge on that $50,000 order is $0.
With rates that high, very little product came in to begin with. CBSA's own review record shows about $641,000 of covered modules were imported in 2025, and the duties collected on them came to more than $1 million.
Why the Duties Were Dropped
The tribunal hasn't said why yet, but there are clues. The trade publication pv magazine reports it ended the review because Canadian producers didn't support continuing it. CBSA's own review points the same way. The one Canadian producer that responded to its questionnaire hadn't manufactured the goods in question since December 2022.
A duty like this exists to protect Canadian producers of the same product. If there weren't many left asking for that protection, it would explain the decision.
What Changes for Installers
For most installers, nothing changes on today's quotes. Chinese modules that were effectively priced out of the Canadian market no longer are, which gives distributors more places to buy from.
Whether that turns into different pricing will depend on whether suppliers start offering those modules to Canadian buyers. That's the part to keep an eye on over the next few months.