Standards Development
CSA exists to develop standards. Among the fifty-seven different areas of specialization are climate change, business management and safety and performance standards, including those for electrical and electronic equipment, industrial equipment, boilers and pressure vessels, compressed gas handling appliances, environmental protection, and construction materials.
Most standards are voluntary, meaning there are no laws requiring their application. Despite that, adherence to standards is beneficial to companies because it shows products have been independently tested to meet certain standards. The CSA mark is a registered certification mark, and can only be applied by someone who is licensed or otherwise authorised to do so by the CSA.
CSA developed the CAN/CSA Z299 series of quality assurance standards, which are still in use today. They are an alternative to the ISO 9000 series of quality standards.
Laws and regulations in most municipalities, provinces and states in North America require certain products to be tested to a specific standard or group of standards by a Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL). Currently forty percent of all the standards issued by CSA are referenced in Canadian legislation. CSA's sister company CSA International is an NRTL which manufacturers can choose, usually because the law of the jurisdiction requires it, or the customer specifies it.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Standards Association
Famous quotes containing the words standards and/or development:
“In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens, a substantial part of its whole population, who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
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—Kyle D. Pruett (20th century)