Originally posted by titan1968@Sep 4 2005, 11:43 PM
By the way, the Metric System is the legal trade system in Canada, and has been since the mid-1970s.
You might be surprised to read the Canadian Weights and Measures Act, which you can see here in its 2004 revision:
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/w-6/109089.html
One of the problems with Canadian, as well as US, law is that while it appears to respect and embrace the metric system (more properly called SI), it then goes on to encourage the use of Imperial or other non-SI national measurement systems.
In the Canadian Weights and Measures act, SI (metric) measures are the
basis for the units of measures, meaing that Canadian Measures are defined and controled by equivalence to SI (metric) units. While SI units can be used for trade, the Weights and measures act defines in section 4:
Canadian units: (5) The Canadian units of measurement are as set out and defined in Schedule II, and the symbols and abbreviations therefor are as added pursuant to subparagraph 6(1)(b)(ii).
When you go to Schedule II, you find that it lists the foot, yard, inch, pound, gallon, and the various other Imperial units. In each category, one of the Imperial units is defiend in terms of its metric equivalent. (Which is where I got the correct metric value of an Imperial Gallon from.) However, the legally defined "Canadian Units" are not the metric units, but rather the Imperial ones, which are "calibrated" against the SI standard measures.
(An interesting exception is made for the Province of Quebec, where the old French system may be used for certain land measure (Schedule III), where land is meaured in feet of 12.789 inches, the arpent, and the perch.)
This is an interesting state of legal affairs. Metric has actually been legal in Canada since 1873, but, as you point out, it wasn't until the 1971 implementation of the Metric Commission Canada that the government got serious about making metric a part of everyday life. By 1976, law required all pre-packaged food to be labeled in metric measure, and in the early 80's many retail establishments had replaced their scales, etc, with metric measures. However, the official government promotion of metric lost continuity in 1984 with the election of a conservative government. Although 1984 was the deadline year for full metrification, it passed without enforcement, and the next year the Metric Commission Canada was dissolved. So, despite proclaimations of metric being the official system, the Weights and Measures Act still calls for Imperial measure. As far as I know, the only legal case where the courts forced metric units to be used for trade was in the case of gasoline (Ontario Court of Appeal, October 1984), but metrification remains largely voluntary and unenforced for other goods.
Metric has a long history in the US, too. In 1875, the United States solidified its commitment to the development of the internationally recognized metric system by becoming one of the original seventeen signatory nations to the Treaty of the Meter. In 1893, metric standards were adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States. Our customary measurements -- the foot, pound, quart, etc. -- have been defined in relation to the meter and the kilogram ever since, just as in the Canadian Units of Measure discussed above. Despite the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, and the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, the US has been slow to adopt metrification. One reason for this is that these acts really only apply to federal government procurement, but do not directly address the private sector. Since most private sector weights and measures are controled by state, not federal, agencies, there isn't much that congress can do to force metrification. Further, simply using a different system of measures does not change the fact that standard sizes, screws, bolts, building material, pipe, etc, are different sizes (not mater what units you use!
in different countries. Therefore, the conversion to metric in the sense of making industrial commodities uniform between countries has very little to do with what units you measure in, and everything to do with historical sizes of things. As an engineer, I always used to laugh when I would find someting built to a German or French "metric" standard that was some really weird fractional number of millimeters, but converted to a nice round number in inches!