Canada Relaxes Metric Policy

Canadians who wouldn’t touch metric measurement with a 3.048-meter pole have forced the government to retreat from a decade-long effort to require them to think in meters, liters and millimeters.

Michel Cote, consumer affairs minister in the Progressive Conservative government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, announced the new policy in Parliament on Wednesday, and gallons, pounds and inches are legal again in Canada.

From now on, the government will encourage the transition to metric but will scrap the laws and regulations punishing merchants who insisted on keeping to the old weights and measures.

“Canadians feel, and we agree, that compulsory metric only is a heavy-handed and insensitive approach,” Cote said.

Retailers will still be required to show “a reasonable metric presence,” Cote said. What is “reasonable” will be different for small butcher shops than for giant supermarkets, but the details haven’t been worked out.