The Trade Tribunal rescinds an eleven-year-old order on Chinese photovoltaic modules and laminates, ending SIMA duties immediately and reshaping the economics of Canadian solar procurement
OTTAWA, September 19, 2026
Canada has quietly removed one of its longest-standing trade barriers against Chinese clean energy equipment, and the effect was immediate.
The Canadian International Trade Tribunal terminated its expiry review on September 17, 2026, and rescinded the order it made on March 25, 2021 in expiry review RR-2020-001 concerning the dumping and subsidizing of certain photovoltaic modules and laminates from China. In a statement issued from Ottawa, the Tribunal said the Canada Border Services Agency “will therefore not continue to impose anti-dumping and countervailing duties on these goods.”
Livingston International, reporting the decision to its clients the following day, said the Tribunal was of the opinion that expiry of the order would not result in injury to the domestic industry, and confirmed that SIMA duties on subject goods are no longer payable as of September 17, 2026.
The decision closes a trade remedy file that has been open since 2015 and that predates the current era of clean energy industrial policy entirely. It arrives at a moment when Canada’s trade posture toward China has softened in some sectors and hardened in others, and when Canadian solar deployment is running into cost pressure from every other direction.
The decision
Expiry reviews under the Special Import Measures Act are conducted jointly. The CBSA examines whether expiry of an order is likely to result in continued or resumed dumping or subsidizing. If it finds that it is, the Tribunal then examines whether that continued or resumed dumping or subsidizing is likely to result in injury to the domestic industry. Measures run for five years and lapse unless the Tribunal continues them.
The Tribunal initiated this expiry review on February 2, 2026, to determine whether expiry of the March 25, 2021 order was likely to lead to continued or resumed dumping or subsidizing of photovoltaic modules and laminates from China, and whether that was likely to result in injury. The CBSA opened its corresponding expiry review investigation, designated SML 2026 ER, and concluded it before the file returned to the Tribunal.
On September 17 the Tribunal terminated the review and rescinded the order. Duties stopped that day.
The Tribunal’s own language is worth noting for its precision. It said it “terminated the expiry review” and “rescinded its order,” and stated the consequence for the CBSA. Livingston’s client advisory characterized the outcome substantively, as a conclusion that expiry would not result in injury to the domestic industry. Both descriptions point to the same commercial result: the order is gone and the duties are not payable.
Eleven years of Canadian solar trade remedy
The order that ended on September 17 has a long lineage.
The Tribunal made its original finding on July 3, 2015, in inquiry NQ-2014-003, concerning the dumping and subsidizing of certain photovoltaic modules and laminates originating in or exported from China. The Tribunal found that, with the exception of monocrystalline photovoltaic modules, the dumping and subsidizing threatened injury to the domestic industry, and duties followed.
That 2015 finding was a product of its moment. Canada’s domestic solar manufacturing sector at the time was largely a creation of Ontario’s Green Energy Act and its domestic content requirements, which had induced module and component assembly capacity in the province. The World Trade Organization found those domestic content rules inconsistent with Canada’s obligations, Ontario wound the program down, and much of the manufacturing base built under it did not survive. The trade remedy order outlasted the policy that created the industry it protected.
On May 21, 2020, the Tribunal initiated an expiry review of the 2015 finding. On March 25, 2021, it continued the finding, concluding that expiry was likely to result in injury. That continuation created the order in RR-2020-001 that has just been rescinded.
The order was amended once more before it ended. The Tribunal initiated an interim review, designated RD-2025-001, in December 2025, and completed it on March 13, 2026, continuing the order with amendment. Interim reviews are typically used to adjust scope, most often by adding or refining product exclusions where the domestic industry no longer produces a particular grade or configuration.
So the arc is: a 2015 injury finding tied to a domestic industry built by provincial content rules, continued once in 2021, amended in early 2026, and rescinded in September 2026.
Why it ended
The Tribunal has not yet published its detailed reasons. The reasons document, when it appears, will be the authoritative account.
The structural reality is not difficult to read. A trade remedy order protects a domestic industry from injury. Where a domestic industry has contracted to the point that injury from imports is no longer likely, whether because production has largely exited or because the remaining producers occupy segments the subject imports do not contest, the statutory basis for continuing an order weakens.
Canada retains photovoltaic manufacturing operations, and a Canadian-headquartered module manufacturing sector exists. Its output, however, is heavily oriented toward the United States market and toward product segments and certifications where Chinese commodity modules are not the direct competitive threat. Whether that shaped the Tribunal’s analysis is a question the reasons will answer.
What can be said without speculation is that the global photovoltaic market of 2026 bears no resemblance to the market of 2015. Module prices have collapsed over the intervening decade as Chinese manufacturing capacity expanded far beyond global demand. The competitive question in solar is no longer principally about pricing behaviour by individual exporters. It is about structural overcapacity operating at a scale that dwarfs the Canadian market entirely.
The counterpoint: Canada’s other China files
The solar rescission should not be read as a general Canadian opening to Chinese goods. The same institutions are moving in the opposite direction on other products, in some cases in the same week.
The CBSA made preliminary determinations of dumping and subsidizing on steel racks from China, with provisional duties payable from September 2, 2026 and the Statement of Reasons published September 17, the same day the solar order was rescinded. The Tribunal initiated its final injury inquiry into steel racks on September 3.
On September 1 the Tribunal initiated a preliminary injury inquiry into truck and bus tires from China. On September 3 it initiated the steel racks inquiry. It has a final injury inquiry pending on forged grinding media from China, initiated in May 2026.
Meanwhile, the bilateral relationship has been moving. In January 2026 Canada and China announced arrangements to reduce tariffs on electric vehicles and canola. Canada agreed to admit up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles at a most-favoured-nation rate of 6.1 percent, down from the 100 percent tariff imposed in 2024. China was expected to lower tariffs on Canadian canola seed to a combined rate of roughly 15 percent from a combined level of approximately 84 percent, and to remove anti-discrimination tariffs on canola meal, lobsters, crabs and peas.
The pattern that emerges is sectoral rather than doctrinal. Canada is negotiating market access where it has export interests to protect, principally agriculture, while maintaining and expanding trade remedy enforcement where domestic manufacturers file complaints and can prove injury. Solar fell out of the second category because the injury case could no longer be sustained, not because of any policy decision to welcome Chinese modules.
What it means for Canadian solar buyers
The immediate effect is a reduction in the landed cost of Chinese photovoltaic modules and laminates entering Canada. SIMA duties that were payable on September 16 were not payable on September 17.
For utility-scale developers, independent power producers, commercial rooftop installers and the growing residential segment, that is a direct input cost improvement on a line item that typically represents a substantial fraction of total installed system cost.
Several qualifications apply, and they matter.
First, the rescission removes SIMA duties. It does not remove ordinary customs duty, and it does not remove any other measure that may apply. Importers must confirm the full duty and tax picture for each classification rather than assuming a zero-duty entry.
Second, procurement decisions in solar are not made on module price alone. Bankability, warranty enforceability, performance guarantees, certification to Canadian standards, and increasingly supply chain diligence requirements all constrain sourcing. Projects financed with conditions on equipment origin, or contracted into United States offtake structures with domestic content requirements, cannot simply switch on a duty change.
Third, and most consequentially for anyone with a cross-border project pipeline, the Canada-United States trade environment is severely disrupted. Canada’s counter-tariffs on approximately C$27.6 billion of United States imports took effect September 8, 2026, covering roughly 629 HS codes at rates of 15, 25 and 50 percent and reaching steel, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper and electronics among other sectors. Canadian duties on United States steel and aluminum were doubled to 50 percent, with affected goods moved into new customs schedules to distinguish them from goods remaining at 25 percent.
Solar projects are not only modules. They are racking, mounting structures, inverters, transformers, combiner boxes, cabling and balance-of-system hardware, much of it steel-intensive and much of it historically sourced from or through the United States. A developer who gains on module cost and loses on structural steel and electrical equipment may find the net effect on project capital cost is modest.
Fourth, the decision is not necessarily permanent. If Chinese module imports surge and a domestic producer can document material injury, nothing prevents a fresh complaint and a new investigation. A rescinded order is not immunity.
Stakeholder reaction
Neither the Canadian solar manufacturing sector nor the renewable energy development industry had issued public statements in the two days following the decision.
The muted response is itself informative. Trade remedy rescissions rarely generate the noise that impositions do. The party that loses protection has already, by definition, failed to sustain an injury case. The parties that gain, importers and project developers, tend to absorb the benefit quietly rather than publicize it.
Provincial governments with renewable procurement programs, particularly Alberta and Ontario, have an interest in the outcome that has not yet been articulated. Lower module costs improve the economics of the projects those programs are trying to attract.
The federal position is more complicated. Ottawa has committed substantial public money to clean technology and to domestic manufacturing capacity across several sectors. Removing a barrier to Chinese solar imports sits uneasily alongside that industrial policy ambition. But the Tribunal is an independent quasi-judicial body that reports to Parliament through the Minister of Finance and decides cases on the statutory test and the evidence before it. It is not an instrument of industrial strategy, and this decision is a reminder of that separation.
Practical guidance
For importers and project developers, several steps follow directly.
Confirm the effective date against actual entry dates. Duties ceased to be payable on subject goods as of September 17, 2026. Goods released before that date were subject to duties, and no refund arises from the rescission for prior entries.
Review the scope carefully. The order covered certain photovoltaic modules and laminates from China. The 2015 finding excluded monocrystalline modules, and the order was amended in the March 2026 interim review. Importers should confirm which products were subject immediately before rescission rather than assuming the scope was uniform across eleven years.
Read the Tribunal’s reasons when published. They will explain the basis for the decision and provide the best available indication of whether a future complaint could succeed. That assessment matters for anyone signing multi-year supply agreements on the assumption that duties will stay off.
Model the whole project, not the module. Balance-of-system components sourced from the United States now face Canadian counter-tariffs at rates up to 50 percent on steel and aluminum. A procurement model that captures the module saving and ignores the structural steel increase will mislead.
Watch the CBSA Measures in Force listing. The authoritative record of which SIMA measures apply to which goods is maintained by the agency and is the document a customs officer will consult.
How expiry reviews actually work, and why this one mattered
The mechanics of the SIMA expiry process are worth setting out, because they explain why an order that had been continued once could end without a public fight.
Every SIMA finding or order expires five years after it is made unless the Tribunal continues it. The expiry is automatic. Continuation requires an affirmative decision, and that decision requires an evidentiary record.
The review runs in two stages. The CBSA goes first, examining whether expiry of the order is likely to result in continued or resumed dumping or subsidizing. That is largely an analysis of exporter behaviour, capacity, pricing in third markets and the attractiveness of the Canadian market. If the CBSA concludes that dumping or subsidizing would likely continue or resume, the file moves to the Tribunal.
The Tribunal then examines the second question: whether that likely dumping or subsidizing would be likely to result in injury to the domestic industry. This is where the analysis turns on the condition of the domestic industry itself. The Tribunal considers domestic production, market share, financial performance, capacity, employment, the likely volume and price effects of renewed imports, and the vulnerability of domestic producers.
The critical procedural feature is that the domestic industry carries the practical burden of demonstrating it needs continued protection. If domestic producers do not participate, do not respond to questionnaires, or cannot demonstrate that they remain a domestic industry in the statutory sense capable of being injured, the order is difficult to sustain. Trade remedy orders are not self-perpetuating.
That is the ordinary mechanism by which long-standing measures come off the books, usually without controversy and often without public notice. A Canadian importer who has been paying duties on a product for years can find them gone on a Thursday because a proceeding they never heard of reached its conclusion.
The numbers behind Canadian solar
Context helps explain why the Canadian solar manufacturing base could not sustain an injury case in 2026.
Canadian annual solar installations, while growing, remain modest by international standards. Alberta has accounted for the large majority of recent utility-scale capacity additions, driven by its deregulated electricity market and strong solar resource. Ontario, once the centre of Canadian solar manufacturing because of provincial content rules, has added comparatively little new capacity since those programs ended. Saskatchewan, and increasingly Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, contribute smaller volumes.
The Canadian market is, in global terms, small. Annual global photovoltaic module manufacturing capacity is measured in hundreds of gigawatts. Canadian annual installations are measured in hundreds of megawatts to low single-digit gigawatts. The disproportion is roughly two orders of magnitude.
That disproportion cuts both ways in trade remedy analysis. It means Canada is highly exposed to diverted volume, because even a small share of global overcapacity would overwhelm the domestic market. It also means Canadian domestic manufacturers, to survive, have generally oriented toward export markets and toward differentiated segments rather than competing on commodity module price at home. An industry that has repositioned away from the segment the subject goods occupy is an industry that is harder to injure by those goods, which is the analytical problem a continuation case must overcome.
Implications for developers and EPC contractors
For engineering, procurement and construction contractors bidding Canadian solar work, the rescission changes the module line in the cost stack and nothing else. Several practical consequences follow.
Bids submitted before September 17 that assumed duty-inclusive module pricing are now conservative. Contractors holding such bids should decide whether to rebid, hold the margin, or negotiate. Bids to be submitted now should reflect the new landed cost, and contractors should expect owners to ask why pricing has not fallen if it has not.
Existing supply contracts with duty-adjustment clauses should be reviewed. Many module supply agreements written during the duty period contain provisions allocating the benefit or burden of changes in trade measures. Those clauses now have work to do, and whichever party benefits should read them before the other party does.
Projects with financing conditions tied to equipment origin need care. Some financing structures, particularly those with any United States nexus, carry origin and supply-chain diligence requirements that operate independently of Canadian duty status. A module that is now duty-free into Canada is not necessarily a module that a given lender will finance.
Procurement teams should nonetheless avoid building long-dated assumptions on the absence of duties. The rescission reflects the state of the domestic industry as it was assessed in this proceeding. A complaint filed in a future year on a different record could produce a different outcome, and new provisional duties would apply prospectively on short notice, exactly as they did to wheat gluten importers this week.
The broader read
Canada’s trade remedy system delivered three distinct outcomes in a single week. It imposed provisional duties on wheat gluten from three European origins. It published its reasons for provisional duties on steel racks from China. And it rescinded an eleven-year-old order on Chinese solar modules.
That is the system working as designed. Each file turns on its own record, its own domestic industry and its own injury evidence. There is no single Canadian posture toward Chinese imports, or European imports, or any other origin, that these decisions collectively express.
For Canadian businesses, the operational lesson is the same in every direction. Duty exposure is product-specific, origin-specific and date-specific, and it changes on schedules published in the Canada Gazette rather than in the news. The companies that manage it well are the ones reading those notices before the invoice arrives.