Canada's skies are opening to new drone rules in 2025

New government regulations can be hard to get excited about — but not if you're a drone pilot like Ian Wills.

Transport Canada's updated rules, to be unveiled early this year, will lift restrictions on longer-distance flights for the remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) or drone industry, making it simpler for pilots to take to the skies.

"The entire drone space is exploding," said Wills, president of Coastal Drone, a drone pilot training organization in Langley, B.C. 

"They're evolving and getting more powerful and more capable and empowering people to do things that we can't even imagine yet."

Think large-scale drone deliveries, aerial inspections or vast overhead mapping or inspections.

It's the kind of lofty potential that people have talked about for years in Canada, but one that's really only made possible with these new regulations.

WATCH | New drone rules for 2025: 

Don't expect Canada's skies to be filled with drones any time soon — the new laws won't come into effect until fall. 

But it means for the first time Transport Canada will move away from a case-by-case application process for these flights. It'll open up much of the country's skies to missions that fall under low-risk beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), where a drone flies out of the pilot's field of view, says Ryan Coates, executive director of remotely piloted aircraft systems for Transport Canada.

It will also mean more stringent rules for pilot certification and updated weight limits for drones.

The BVLOS rules will be most lax in low-risk or less-populated areas, meaning Canada's more remote communities could stand to gain the most from services that could be provided.   

Previously, a pilot would need to apply to Transport Canada for special permission every time they wanted to fly their drone beyond their visual line of sight. 

That meant tens if not hundreds of hours of paperwork, says Wills.