The Weights and Measures Act was law. Then a judge in Ontario said it violated the Charter, and suddenly the country that spent a decade switching to metric didn't know what to measure anything in.
In 1984 I was 13 years old, so I'm part of that small cadre of Gen Xers that grew up measurement-bilingual, and I remember the metric war very well.
I grew up on the prairies, where any new idea pushed by Ottawa was (sometimes fairly) greeted with skepticism, but the fight for gallons was some next level stuff. People swore metric was a communist plot, a tool to brainwash the next generation. It starts with buying gas in litres...then the next thing you know people are growing beards, smoking weed, and listening to Pink Floyd records. We had a neighbour that bought out Canadian Tire's stock of jerry cans so he could stockpile gas bought by the gallon. Like somehow the stuff dispensed by the litre would be inferior, or carry a plague virus.
The only other government mandate I remember causing as much of a ruckus was the mandatory seatbelt usage law.
One element which might not be immediately evident is the Charter had just been implemented.
I don't know for certain that this is what happened in the Ontario Weights & Measures case but in the early days of the Charter, lawyers were throwing Charter challenges on pretty much anything and there was no process built up around it.
Since the Charter was new, each challenge was novel. The judges didn't have much caselaw or precedents to guide their decision. As a result, in a terrible number of cases, judges allowed the Charter challenges to exclude evidence, to overturn legislation etc.
The Law of Unintended Consequences says interventions in complex systems—such as economies or ecosystems—always produce unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes. In the case of the Charter, there were cascading unanticipated undesirable outcomes.
Eventually Crown prosecutors realized Charter challenges (founded or otherwise) were overwhelming their ability to secure convictions. I say eventually as Crown prosecutors aren't the "cream of the crop" at the best of times. If they were, they wouldn't be working for the gubbermint.
Crown prosecutors put process in place so anticipated Charter challenges needed to be declared before the trial to prevent defense lawyers from using Charter challenges like an Uno Reverse card mid-trial. If evidence led by the Crown disclosed an unanticipated challenge, it was handled via "Voir Dire" (trial within trial) without disrupting the entire case.
This led to a rather notorious case (R vs Stinchcombe) involving a lawyer charged with breach of trust etc. Since the Crown prosecutors were walking carefully, their disclosure of evidence to the defense was neither fulsome nor expedient. Although Stinchcombe was convicted, the judge made it very clear all evidence MUST be disclosed well in advance of trial.
That disclosure requirement caused remarkable issues for policing as evidence against Baddie #1 often implicated Baddie #2 who was still under investigation, not yet charged, so disclosure to defense risked derailing ongoing investigations.
In 1984 I was 13 years old, so I'm part of that small cadre of Gen Xers that grew up measurement-bilingual, and I remember the metric war very well.
I grew up on the prairies, where any new idea pushed by Ottawa was (sometimes fairly) greeted with skepticism, but the fight for gallons was some next level stuff. People swore metric was a communist plot, a tool to brainwash the next generation. It starts with buying gas in litres...then the next thing you know people are growing beards, smoking weed, and listening to Pink Floyd records. We had a neighbour that bought out Canadian Tire's stock of jerry cans so he could stockpile gas bought by the gallon. Like somehow the stuff dispensed by the litre would be inferior, or carry a plague virus.
The only other government mandate I remember causing as much of a ruckus was the mandatory seatbelt usage law.
my kids describe themselves in feet, inches and pounds as do I, but I am still uncomfortable with personal metric measurements
Same here. I’ve been trying to convert to kg and cm but it’s difficult.
One element which might not be immediately evident is the Charter had just been implemented.
I don't know for certain that this is what happened in the Ontario Weights & Measures case but in the early days of the Charter, lawyers were throwing Charter challenges on pretty much anything and there was no process built up around it.
Since the Charter was new, each challenge was novel. The judges didn't have much caselaw or precedents to guide their decision. As a result, in a terrible number of cases, judges allowed the Charter challenges to exclude evidence, to overturn legislation etc.
The Law of Unintended Consequences says interventions in complex systems—such as economies or ecosystems—always produce unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes. In the case of the Charter, there were cascading unanticipated undesirable outcomes.
Eventually Crown prosecutors realized Charter challenges (founded or otherwise) were overwhelming their ability to secure convictions. I say eventually as Crown prosecutors aren't the "cream of the crop" at the best of times. If they were, they wouldn't be working for the gubbermint.
Crown prosecutors put process in place so anticipated Charter challenges needed to be declared before the trial to prevent defense lawyers from using Charter challenges like an Uno Reverse card mid-trial. If evidence led by the Crown disclosed an unanticipated challenge, it was handled via "Voir Dire" (trial within trial) without disrupting the entire case.
This led to a rather notorious case (R vs Stinchcombe) involving a lawyer charged with breach of trust etc. Since the Crown prosecutors were walking carefully, their disclosure of evidence to the defense was neither fulsome nor expedient. Although Stinchcombe was convicted, the judge made it very clear all evidence MUST be disclosed well in advance of trial.
That disclosure requirement caused remarkable issues for policing as evidence against Baddie #1 often implicated Baddie #2 who was still under investigation, not yet charged, so disclosure to defense risked derailing ongoing investigations.