One of my very first cases as an articling student at McCarthy and McCarthy as it then was, involved margarine. Warehouses full of the wrong coloured margarine were locked down as the colour violated regulatory requirements, that margarine be a different colour than butter. No false advertising. I remember the urgency of trying to deal with the search warrant and the return/preservation of the product. I had nightmares, brought on by my trauma of being thrust into articling hell, about rivers of my client’s melting product wading through London, Ontario.
During the course of my articling year, I then became involved with a second case,where on behalf of margarine manufacturers, we brought a constitutional challenge under the Charter, arguing that the regulatory requirements violated our clients’ freedom of expression.
