The outstanding true story of the struggle to outright ban margarine in Canada

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The story of margarine dates again to the mid-1800s in France and contains an fascinating story of Canadian interprovincial commerce. Meals shortages, particularly for edible fat, stimulated a Nineteenth-century seek for butter substitutes. A French scientist by the identify of Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès conceived of a palatable substance that would serve in its place. His course of mixed warmth, strain, beef fats, and a sort of salt to provide an oil that may very well be churned with milk, water, and yellow colouring. It didn’t have the mouth-watering richness of butter, nevertheless it helped the French soften stale bread of their time of want. It’s ironic that the nation with the very best per-capita consumption of butter on the earth, and whose delicacies depends closely on the dairy product, ought to invent its lesser sibling.

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Manufacturing of the unfold in the USA grew shortly. In 1886, solely 17 years after its preliminary invention in France, 37 crops in the USA manufactured oleomargarine, as margarine was then referred to as. This identical development in its manufacture had not but occurred in Canada, and sure politicians wished to reap the benefits of this lag. In 1886, Member of Parliament Thomas Sproule argued: “as far as recognized, (oleomargarine) just isn’t now manufactured within the nation; and there’s no time that you may deal so properly with such a matter as earlier than vested pursuits are established.” Sproule wished to ban the substance earlier than industrial manufacturing might even start within the younger confederation.

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Margarine had brought about an uproar in Canada on account of its artificiality and the potential for shopper deceit. In 1884, the British Columbian, a newspaper in New Westminster, reported {that a} New York well being inspector had been bought margarine that shopkeepers had marketed as butter. Commenting on this affront, the British Columbian wrote that “it’s manifestly unfair {that a} man ought to preserve paying excessive costs for refined grease when he believes he’s getting good dairy produce.” In style perception held that margarine was a risk to public well being. In a Home of Commons debate in 1886, John Wooden, Member of Parliament for Brockville, Ont., captured the temper about public security considerations that many in the home had already articulated that day: “If it’s a reality … that oleomargarine is a harmful article of meals, it turns into our obligation, not alone to manage, however to ban its importation.”

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Although the buyer deception and dangers to public well being could have genuinely involved politicians on the time, safety of the Canadian dairy trade was a key driver of the motion to ban margarine. Canadian politicians freely admitted the hostile industrial penalties for dairy farmers as justification for a ban. In that very same Home of Commons debate in 1886, Sproule argued that the sale of margarine harmed the underside traces of Canadian farmers: “the existence of [oleo-margarine] detracts from the income of the agriculturalists of this nation, who characterize a really massive variety of folks.” Wooden additionally famous the way it was a aggressive risk to butter and the dairy trade.

The proposal to limit margarine was introduced earlier than the Home by George Taylor, member of Parliament for Leeds, Ont., the place dairy farming was a dominant trade. In 1871, an agricultural census confirmed that just about each farm within the county had a portion of its enterprise concerned within the manufacture of butter. Indicative of dairy’s position within the county’s financial system, Leeds at the moment produced essentially the most cheese of any county in Ontario. In 1892, 76 factories in Leeds produced $807,000 price of cheese, amounting to roughly 10 per cent of Ontario’s cheese output for that 12 months.

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Shortly after the Could 1886 Home of Commons debate on margarine’s prohibition, the federal authorities enacted a complete ban on the unfold, which might final till 1949. Margarine thus grew to become a bootleg substance. Safety of the buyer and of the dairy trade have been each cited as justification. Within the Twenties, Alan Neill, a member of Parliament from British Columbia, continued the road of argumentation made by members in 1886, contending earlier than his colleagues within the Home of Commons that “oleomargarine just isn’t an alternative to butter. It’s a misleading counterfeit,” and that Canadians have been entitled to safety from the substance in the identical approach “{that a} man says he’s entitled to when he finds that his home has been damaged into and he claims the safety of the legislation.” On account of federal laws, butter confronted no competitors from margarine till the center of the twentieth century, apart from a quick interlude between 1917 and 1922 in response to wartime circumstances.

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After World Conflict II, the Supreme Court docket of Canada had one thing to say concerning the 1886 legislation that had instituted a nation-wide margarine ban. Dairy was nonetheless an essential trade in Canada. Roughly $400 million of dairy merchandise have been produced yearly, together with $150 million of butter. In 1949, this is able to have amounted to just about one-third the worth of all agricultural output in Canada. Although the trade performed a essential position in Canada’s agricultural financial system, one justice famous how Canada was at the moment the one “essential” nation that prohibited the importation, manufacturing, and consumption of margarine.

The Supreme Court docket dominated that the federal authorities had the ability to ban the importation of margarine as a result of the structure offers Parliament jurisdiction over commerce and commerce. Nonetheless, the courtroom additionally declared that the federal authorities couldn’t use its constitutional authority over prison legislation in Canada to ban the home manufacture, sale, and possession of margarine. Ottawa might preserve Canadians from bringing margarine throughout the border with its commerce and commerce energy, nevertheless it had no energy to cease them from making it of their basement or spreading it on toast. Slightly, it was as much as the provinces to clamp down on the substance in the event that they so happy.

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The dairy trade turned to provincial governments, refocusing their lobbying efforts to attain the identical safety that the federal legislation had offered. It labored. Two provinces, Quebec and Prince Edward Island, adopted insurance policies of full-blown prohibition till 1961 and 1965 respectively. The opposite provinces started requiring that margarine be colored in a different way than butter. The aim of this coverage was not solely to permit shoppers to simply distinguish the looks of margarine from butter, but additionally to connect a adverse stigma to margarine and emphasize its unnaturalness. Colouration coverage discovered precedent in the USA. Sure states went farther than others; at one level Vermont and New Hampshire required that margarine be colored pink.

The U.S. federal authorities had additionally participated in a marketing campaign in opposition to margarine. Congress used its federal taxation powers to basically coerce margarine producers into producing colourless and unappetizing merchandise. In 1902, Congress amended its 1886 Olemargarine Act to tax colored margarine at a charge of 10 cents per pound (equal to $3.00 at present, accounting for inflation), as in comparison with 0.25 cents per pound for its uncoloured counterpart. This large surcharge made colored margarine simply as expensive because the less-expensive grades of butter. Provincial regulators throughout Canada, like their counterparts south of the border, did what they might to make margarine as unappealing as doable to defend butter’s market share.

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Although most provinces allowed their butter colouration insurance policies to lapse within the Seventies, Quebec reinstituted its Conflict on Margarine in 1987 with a prohibition of colored margarine. Through the Eighties, Quebec repeatedly produced almost half of Canada’s total output of butter. Dairy merchandise similar to butter and cheese have been Quebec’s major agricultural yield on the time, constituting 34 per cent of its whole worth. The provincial rule required that margarine in Quebec tackle a distasteful white look, akin to lard.

In 1997, margarine producers took the Quebec authorities to courtroom, alleging partially that the margarine measures violated part 121. The Quebec trial courtroom upheld the colouration coverage, ruling that the measures associated to industrial actions happening wholly inside Quebec, and that any interference with interprovincial commerce was merely incidental.

There may be nearly no clearer case of protectionism than the Quebec prohibition in opposition to colored margarine. The highly effective Quebec dairy trade had gained authorized insulation from competitors by way of the legislative course of. Nonetheless, a willingness to insulate our dairy trade from among the open market’s ravaging forces can be part of Canada’s tradition and id. It’s a compromise that Canadians have accepted to make sure that rural farming communities retain their vitality, and to maintain dairy part of Canada’s agricultural trade.

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The margarine struggle didn’t finish on the Supreme Court docket, nonetheless, as Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan would take Quebec to job beneath the Settlement on Inner Commerce (AIT). Strife amongst Canada’s agriculturalists spelled one other home commerce battle.

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Nearly all of vegetable oil consumed in Canada comes from two oilseeds: canola and soybean. Canola, which has captured roughly 45 per cent of Canada’s margarine market, is a very essential farm product for the prairie provinces. In 2004, the 12 months that the trio (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba) filed go well with in opposition to Quebec beneath the AIT, they produced over 98 per cent of Canada’s whole canola output, valued at $2.1 billion. This determine constituted almost 11 per cent of whole farm output worth for these provinces in that 12 months. In launching the AIT dispute, Canada’s breadbasket was on a mission to develop the marketplace for one in every of its most prized agricultural merchandise. The case of Quebec – Colored Margarine was a civil battle between western Canada’s farmers and Quebec’s dairyers: canola versus cows. Within the crosshairs was that Quebec measure that required margarine to seem colourless. The dispute panel concluded that butter and margarine have been “like” each other. As a result of the 2 have been like, and since Quebec discriminated in opposition to margarine which mainly hailed from out of province, Quebec was discovered to have violated the AIT’s non-discrimination obligation.

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With the AIT choice, the inner commerce dispute adjudicators referred to as for a halt on the unfold of the unfold’s second-class standing. Quebec – Margarine was essential for curbing the discriminatory therapy afforded to margarine in Quebec.

The battle between butter and margarine that raged between Canada’s prairie provinces and Quebec within the authorized setting of the AIT is a microcosm of the regional rifts that pervade the nation’s historic narrative. Specifically, it speaks to a convention of antagonism between western and jap Canada on nationwide financial coverage. Whether or not over market entry for canola, pipelines to move bitumen from the oilsands, Pierre Trudeau’s Nationwide Vitality Program, or Sir John A. Macdonald’s nationwide coverage tariffs, battle between the financial and political pursuits of its areas threads by way of the Canadian story.

Excerpted from Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Mud-Ups by Ryan Manucha, Chapter 11 ‘Margarine Meltdown’ (McGill-Queen’s College Press, 2022)

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