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March 19, 2005
Down With Margarine!
US states may be debating banning things like gay marriage and evolution in schools, but in Canada, Québec bans something much more insidious: coloured margarine.
Quebec's strong dairy lobby was able to persuade the government to protect the population from margarine until 1961. But margarine did manage to make its way to morning toast in the province. The dairy lobby, though, was determined to make sure that Quebecers would not be confused and buy margarine if they were really after butter.
These kinds of laws really annoy me. Clearly they were enacted to protect businesses (in this case, Québec's dairy lobby), and not the public (I don't know about you, but I have *never* confused butter with margarine due to being the same colour).
Comments
We Quebecois are a mysterious lot.
Another interesting law states that all residential leases in Montreal have to begin and end on July 1st. A real estate agent informed me that this was to allow parents to move after the school year has ended. An unfortunate side effect is that renting moving vans, and hiring movers, costs 3 or 4 times as much during the July 1st period, because everyone is trying to move at once. The streets are clogged with vans, and chaos reigns for days.
I pointed out that (a) not everyone has children and (b) other provinces get along just fine without the July 1st law. And I was ignored.
Posted by: ryan at March 21, 2005 6:30 AM