Now, to start, I'm NO fan of the fart-can mufflers either, but....why is one better than the other, aside from the sound that comes out of it? The sound generated, so long as it's not running afoul of noise bylaws (which, in another interesting twist, are also open to a lot of interpretation) shouldn't matter so far as "Safety" (looking at it purely from that perspective) is concerned. I'm sure I could find a muffler that makes my Hemi Magnum sound absolutely terrible, but still quiet, just tonally all wrong. Why would that be a fail, but a "nice quality magnaflow" would be a pass?
The subjectiveness of some of this is where the issues are going to begin IMHO....and if the owner of a car takes issue with something that has failed due to a subjective decision on behalf of the guy doing the inspection, who does he file an objection with? I'd bet dollars to donuts that this will lead to people just taking the car elsewhere and getting a different opinion on the same issue that might have failed them at the last shop, and suddenly the subjectiveness goes the other way and the vehicle passes.
The best thing anyone could do when these new standards come into play is avoid the big chain shops like the plague. Taking any car older than a few years to a place like Canadian Tire or such is a recipe for everything being held to such ridiculous standards that anything short of a 1 or 2 year old car that has never had an ounce of work done to it will likely never pass without a massive laundry list of "repairs", using the term loosely. Hell, at Canadian Tire even that "nice quality magnaflow" would probably fail since, in their totally subjective decision that will no doubt be held to ridiculous standards, it doesn't meet "OEM standard".
Hopefully the mom and pop shops will be a lot more understanding when it comes to the subjectiveness issues.