Health Canada has an act called the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act which regulates the sale of items in Canada. It's the same act that controls the sales of things like cribs and makes the sale of a recalled crib illegal - for example.
The act was revised in June of 2011 and the act now states that only car seat which meet current CMVSS standards are legal to sell, loan, or give away.
So it is actually a legality issue - it is illegal for you to sell your seat, loan it to someone, or give it away, since it wasn't certified to the updated CMVSS standards.
I honestly can't comment on the safety - old seats aren't considered to be unsafe, but new seats are being tested to a standard that is designed to provide a higher level of protection to Canadian children. The intent of the act is to ensure that families who are purchasing items are getting items which meet the updated standards.
A family going in to the store to buy a Peg Perego infant seat would be purchasing a seat with higher weight limits, possibly a different insert depending on whether they got 2012 or 2013 stock, and would find some differences in the actual use of the seat - for example, the new seats are required to have the handle in the position by the child's feet while driving. Your seat would've had the choice. (Depending on the exact date of manufacture, it may be under a consumer information notice regarding handle positions, so that is something to check in to as well.) The current Peg Perego infant seats also have EPS foam in the headrest whereas your's wouldn't have.
I can understand how it seems wasteful to have to destroy a seat that still has between 1 and 2yrs left before it expires, but the legislation was made with good intent in regards to the wide group of products that it covers.
I want to be clear just for the sake of anyone reading, that it is not illegal for someone to buy a non-compliant seat; it is just illegal for the owner of the seat to sell it, loan it, or give it away.
There are a number of threads around here about the CCPSA if you do a forum search. There's been a lot of controversy and a lot of debates about it, but I believe the legislation was made with the right intentions and I support it for those reasons. I really think it is muddled and confusing the way they went about it though.
From the carseat manufacturer perspective, I can appreciate their concern about liability even in the absence of the Health Canada legislation. As soon as you get a 2nd owner of a seat, you no longer have the ability to find out full history of a seat... Say that the new owner gets in a collision and something happens - the company wants to investigate and as part of that, they need to understand whether failure was due to the prior care/use/potential misuse/possible pre-existing damage of the seat - or whether it was a problem with the seat itself. It must be difficult from a company perspective to properly investigate a complaint if the person calling doesn't know the full history of the seat and can't answer questions about the care and use of it...
I'm guessing it's pretty rare that the 2nd owner would sue the original owner of the seat - chances of them actually having contact information from someone they bought a 2nd hand seat from are pretty low for starters... but I guess there is that possibility as well if it was determined that prior care or prior use of the seat was the cause of a failure. I don't think I've ever seen a discussion on the potential liability of selling a used seat before though so it's not something I can give definitive information on. I think the risk is there, but is improbable.
