Metrication in Canada - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

has converted to the metric system

Metric system

The metric system is an international decimalised system of measurement. France was first to adopt a metric system, in 1799, and a metric system is now the official system of measurement, used in almost every country in the world...

for many purposes but there is still significant use of non-metric units and standards in many sectors of the Canadian economy. This is mainly due to historical ties with the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

(before metrication), the traditional use of the imperial system

Imperial unit

The system of imperial units or the imperial system is the system of units first defined in the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824, which was later refined and reduced. The system came into official use across the British Empire...

of measurement in Canada, close proximity to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, and to public opposition to metrication during the transition period.

Before conversion

Until the 1970s, Canada traditionally used the imperial system of measurement units, labelled as "Canadian units of measurements" under Schedule II, Section 4 of the Weights and Measures Act
Weights and Measures Act (R.S. 1985)
Weights and Measures Act is a Canadian law governing the units of measurements used in Canada.Originally passed in 1970 as part of the federal government's plan for metrication of Canada from Imperial measures, it was stopped in 1985 and changes were made to the Act...

(R.S., 1985, c. W-6). These units have the same name and, with the exception of capacity measures such as the gallon

Gallon

The gallon is a measure of volume. Historically it has had many different definitions, but there are three definitions in current use: the imperial gallon which is used in the United Kingdom and semi-officially within Canada, the United States liquid gallon and the lesser used United States dry...

, the same values as U.S. customary units. For example, before metrication in Canada, gasoline was sold by the imperial gallon (4.55 litre

Litre

pic|200px|right|thumb|One litre is equivalent to this cubeEach side is 10 cm1 litre water = 1 kilogram water The litre is a metric system unit of volume equal to 1 cubic decimetre , to 1,000 cubic centimetres , and to 1/1,000 cubic metre...

s) whereas, south of the border in the U.S., it was sold by the U.S. gallon (3.78 litres). In cross-border transactions, it was often confusing whether values quoted in pints, gallons, tons, etc. were referring to the U.S. values or the imperial values of these units.

Conversion process

The Liberal

Liberal Party of Canada

The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...

federal government of Pierre Trudeau

Pierre Trudeau

Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, , usually known as Pierre Trudeau or Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984.Trudeau began his political career campaigning for socialist ideals,...

first began implementing metrication in Canada in 1970 with a government agency dedicated to implementing the project, the Metric Commission

Metric Commission

The Metric Commission, formally the Preparatory Commission for the Conversion to the Metric System was a Canadian government agency established by the federal government in 1971 to facilitate Canada's conversion to the Metric system from the imperial system of weights and measures and to educate...

, being established in 1971. By the mid-1970s, metric product labelling was introduced. In 1972, the provinces agreed to make all road signs metric by 1977. There was some resistance to metrication, especially as the sectors of the economy where the federal Weights and Measures Act required metric to be used grew in number. The metrication of gasoline and diesel fuel sales in 1981 prompted 37 Progressive Conservative

Progressive Conservative Party of Canada

The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada was a Canadian political party with a centre-right stance on economic issues and, after the 1970s, a centrist stance on social issues....

Members of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

to open a "freedom to measure" gas station

Filling station

A filling station, also known as a fueling station, garage, gasbar , gas station , petrol bunk , petrol pump , petrol garage, petrol kiosk , petrol station "'servo"' in Australia or service station, is a facility which sells fuel and lubricants...

in Carleton Place, Ontario

Carleton Place, Ontario

Carleton Place is a town in the eastern portion of Eastern Ontario, Canada, in Lanark County, about west of downtown Ottawa. It is located at the crossroads of Highway 15 and Highway 7, halfway between the towns of Perth, Almonte, Smiths Falls, and the nation's capital, Ottawa...

, selling gas in both imperial gallons and litres. The small city of Peterborough, Ontario

Peterborough, Ontario

Peterborough is a city on the Otonabee River in southern Ontario, Canada, 125 kilometres northeast of Toronto. The population of the City of Peterborough was 74,898 as of the 2006 census, while the census metropolitan area has a population of 121,428 as of a 2009 estimate. It presently ranks...

, was a noted hotbed of opposition to metrication, having been one of the government's three test centres for the metrication process. Bill Domm

Bill Domm

William Henry Domm was a Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons from 1979 to 1993. He was best known for his crusades against the metric system and in favour of capital punishment....

, a Member of Parliament representing the riding of Peterborough, was one of the country's most outspoken opponents of metrication. During this period, a few government employees lost their jobs for their opposition to metrication. One official with Revenue Canada who publicly opposed mandatory metric conversion was dismissed for "conduct unacceptable for a public servant."

The changeover

Since 1976 the law requires that all prepacked food products must declare their mass or their volume in metric units. Milk has been thoroughly metric since 1980. In April 1975 Fahrenheit

Fahrenheit

Fahrenheit is the temperature scale proposed in 1724 by, and named after, the German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit . Within this scale, the freezing of water into ice is defined at 32 degrees, while the boiling point of water is defined to be 212 degrees...

temperatures were replaced by Celsius. In September 1975 rainfall was first measured in millimetres and snow in centimetres. Since April 1976, wind speed, visibility, and atmospheric pressure have been in SI units, with the pressure in kilopascals

Pascal (unit)

The pascal is the SI derived unit of pressure, internal pressure, stress, Young's modulus and tensile strength, named after the French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and philosopher Blaise Pascal. It is a measure of force per unit area, defined as one newton per square metre...

. In September 1977 every speed-limit sign in the country was changed from miles per hour to kilometres per hour.

Metrication stalled

After the election of Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

in the United States, Congress closed the U.S. Metric Board, stalling metrication in the U.S. in the early 1980s (although upon leaving office in 1988, Reagan signed legislation declaring the metric system to be the nation's preferred
system of measurement for trade and commerce). The election of the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney

Brian Mulroney

Martin Brian Mulroney, was the 18th Prime Minister of Canada from September 17, 1984, to June 25, 1993 and was leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada from 1983 to 1993. His tenure as Prime Minister was marked by the introduction of major economic reforms, such as the Canada-U.S...

in 1984 similarly slowed, and ultimately stalled, metrication in Canada. The Metric Commission was abolished on March 31, 1985, and many regulations requiring metric measurements have either been repealed or are no longer enforced. As a result, Canadians today typically use a mix of metric and imperial measurements in their daily lives.

Training on metric conversion was not universal. Poor metrication training was a contributing factor to Air Canada Flight 143, the so called Gimli Glider

Gimli Glider

The Gimli Glider is the nickname of the Air Canada aircraft that was involved in a notable aviation incident. On 23 July 1983, Air Canada Flight 143, a Boeing 767-200 jet, ran out of fuel at an altitude of ASL, about halfway through its flight from Montreal to Edmonton via Ottawa...

, running out of fuel mid-flight on 23 July 1983.

Notwithstanding the end of officially-sanctioned metrication in Canada, most laws, regulations, and official forms exclusively use metric measurements. However, imperial measures still have legal definitions in Canada and can be used alongside of metric units.

Daily usage

Canadians typically discuss the weather in degrees Celsius

Celsius

Celsius is a scale and unit of measurement for temperature. It is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius , who developed a similar temperature scale two years before his death...

, purchase gasoline in litres, observe speed limits set in kilometres per hour (km/h), and read road signs and maps displaying distances in kilometres. Cars have metric speedometers and odometers, although many speedometers include smaller figures in miles per hour (mph). Fuel efficiency for new vehicles is published by Natural Resources Canada

Natural Resources Canada

The Department of Natural Resources , operating under the FIP applied title Natural Resources Canada , is the ministry of the government of Canada responsible for natural resources, energy, minerals and metals, forests, earth sciences, mapping and remote sensing...

in litres per 100 kilometres and miles per gallon. Window stickers in dealer showrooms often include "miles per gallon" conversions. The railways of Canada continue to measure their trackage in miles, and speed limits in mph. Canadian railcars show weight figures in both imperial and metric.

Canadians, today typically use a mix of metric and imperial measurements in their daily lives. However the use of the metric and imperial systems varies according to generations. The older generations mostly uses the imperial system, while the younger generations uses the metric system more frequently. Newborns are measured in SI at hospitals, but the birth weight and length is also announced to family and friends in imperial units. Although drivers' licences in some provinces like British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador use SI units, other provinces use imperial units. In addition, Fahrenheit

Fahrenheit

is often used for cooking, as are imperial cooking measurements, although some appliances in Canada are labelled with degrees Celsius or are convertible, and metric cooking measures are widely available. Stationery and photographic prints are also sold in sizes based on inches and the most popular paper sizes, letter and legal, are sized in imperial units. Canadian Football League

Canadian Football League

The Canadian Football League or CFL is a professional sports league located in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football, a form of gridiron football closely related to American football....

games continue to be played on fields measured in yards; golfers also expect courses to be measured in yards.

Experience

The use of metric or imperial measurements varies by age and region. Canadians who have received only metric instruction in school (from the early 1970s) are more familiar with metric measurements. Though traditional units are commonly used for height and weight, and are often used for length, a general understanding of traditional units does not generally go much beyond that unless perhaps the user has spent a significant amount of time in the United States. However unlike in the rest of Canada, metrication in the Francophone

Francophone

The adjective francophone means French-speaking, typically as primary language, whether referring to individuals, groups, or places. Often, the word is used as a noun to describe a natively French-speaking person....

province of Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

has been more implemented and metric measures are more consistently used in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada. The use of imperial units is more common in rural areas in the rest of the country, where opposition to metrication was strongest, rather than in urban areas.

Canadians are exposed to both metric and imperial units, and it is not unusual for there to be references to both metres and feet, acre

Acre

The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...

s and hectare

Hectare

The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...

s, and grams and ounce

Ounce

The ounce is a unit of mass with several definitions, the most commonly used of which are equal to approximately 28 grams. The ounce is used in a number of different systems, including various systems of mass that form part of the imperial and United States customary systems...

s in the same conversation.

Temperature

Despite the virtually exclusive use of degrees Celsius in weather reports, some older Canadians still use Fahrenheit, often referring to it as "the old system". Most outdoor thermometers display temperatures in both Fahrenheit and Celsius. In addition, outdoor electronic signs tend to give both scales—in the format "68°/20C". Inside newer buildings, digital and analog thermostats usually display temperature settings in degrees Celsius, however Fahrenheit thermostats are still in use. Environment Canada

Environment Canada

Environment Canada , legally incorporated as the Department of the Environment under the Department of the Environment Act Environment Canada (EC) (French: Environnement Canada), legally incorporated as the Department of the Environment under the Department of the Environment Act Environment...

still offers an Imperial unit option beside metric units, even though weather is typically measured and reported in metric units in the Canadian media. However, some radio stations near the United States border (such as CIMX-FM

CIMX-FM

CIMX-FM — branded 89X — is a commercial active-leaning alternative rock radio station based in Windsor, Ontario. 89X serves both Essex County, Ontario and Metro Detroit; its 100,000-watt signal reaches most of southwestern Ontario, southeastern Michigan, the Toledo metro area and the western Lake...

and CIDR-FM

CIDR-FM

CIDR-FM is the callsign for a radio station, broadcasting at 93.9 FM in Windsor, Ontario. The station broadcasts a adult album alternative format using the brand name 93-9 The River. It is owned and operated by Bell Media. It is one of the few commercial adult album alternative stations in Canada...

) primarily use imperial units to report the weather.

Products and retail

Most food and many retail products are sold according to metric units, though this is not always the case. Canadians will usually purchase their deli meats by the gram, but holiday turkeys, for example, are almost always purchased by the pound. Fruits and vegetables are almost exclusively sold in pounds, while more expensive items such as fish are often advertised in per hundred grams. Many products are sold in imperial sizes, but labelled in metric units. An example of this is butter, which is sold in a 454-gram

Gram

The gram is a metric system unit of mass....

package (and labelled as such), even though it represents one pound

Pound (mass)

The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in the Imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement...

(and in many cases is also labelled with the imperial unit). This is known as "soft metric" (as opposed to a "hard metric" system, where packages and measures are generally sold in round, even numbers; in a hard metric system, butter would come in a 500 g package).

In restaurants, wine is usually served by the litre, bottle (750 mL), half-litre and wineglass—measured in ounces. Similarly, fast-food restaurants (e.g. McDonald's

McDonald's

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...

Quarter Pounder) often advertise measurements of food and drink in U.S. customary units, but converted to metric units, either because the containers are made to U.S. standards, or the franchise is U.S.-based and uses a standard size for its products. Thus in Canada a 20 U.S. fluid ounce

Fluid ounce

A fluid ounce is a unit of volume equal to about 28.4 mL in the imperial system or about 29.6 mL in the US system. The fluid ounce is distinct from the ounce, which measures mass...

bottled soft drink is labelled as 591 mL. Beer in bottles continues to be 12 imperial fluid ounces (labelled as 341 mL), but beer in cans is filled to 12 U.S. fluid ounces (labelled as 355 mL). There is also a larger sized beer bottle which is labelled as containing 1,183 mL. This corresponds to exactly 40 U.S. fluid ounces. Some of these package sizes have been introduced since Canadian metrication began; for example, the traditional Canadian soft drink can was 10 imperial fluid ounces (284 mL), later marketed as 280 mL. Only in the 1980s did the U.S.-derived 355 mL size displace it. Television sets are also measured in inches. Standard and special fasteners like alloys, nuts, bolts, washers, studs, tapping, self drilling screw & socket screware are quoted in often in both imperial and metric, products range from in (0.91 mm) diameter up to 4 inch (101.6mm).

Commercial usage

Supermarkets will often advertise foods such as meats and produce

Produce

Produce is a generalized term for a group of farm-produced goods and, not limited to fruits and vegetables . More specifically, the term "produce" often implies that the products are fresh and generally in the same state as where they were harvested. In supermarkets the term is also used to refer...

"per pound", since such prices may appear lower to consumers than prices advertised by kilogram. However, virtually all supermarket scales are metric, and the products advertised by the pound in a supermarket flyer

Flyer (pamphlet)

__notoc__A flyer or flier, also called a circular, handbill or leaflet, is a form of paper advertisement intended for wide distribution and typically posted or distributed in public place....

are inevitably weighed and sold to the customer in the store based on a price "per 100 grams" or "per kilogram". Small businesses are exempt from having metric scales and legally sell by the pound.

Similarly, residential floor space is usually measured in square feet

Square foot

The square foot is an imperial unit and U.S. customary unit of area, used mainly in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is defined as the area of a square with sides of 1 foot in length...

, as a 1500 square feet (139 m²) house may be more appealing to a homebuyer than the same size house that is advertised as 139 square metre

Square metre

The square metre or square meter is the SI derived unit of area, with symbol m2 . It is defined as the area of a square whose sides measure exactly one metre...

s. Construction materials, including construction lumber and drywall, continue to be sold in imperial measurements; retrofitting metric-sized (designed for 400 millimetre centres) wallboard on old 16-inch (406.4 mm) spaced studs is difficult. Construction of commercial space is done in square metres, but advertised in square footage. All commercial construction in Canada is measured in metric. Interestingly, however, the zoning by-laws and building codes that govern construction are in metric (as are virtually all official documents), although some building codes will also contain imperial equivalents. In addition, rural areas were mapped and segmented using the Dominion Land Survey

Dominion Land Survey

The Dominion Land Survey is the method used to divide most of Western Canada into one-square-mile sections for agricultural and other purposes. It is based on the layout of the Public Land Survey System used in the United States, but has several differences...

. This based most rural roads on a mile measurement which when viewed from the air has the appearance of a checkerboard or grid.Google Maps view of South Western Manitoba near Brandon Because of this standard now etched into the landscape, it is still common to refer to distance in miles since counting the number of mile roads is easy.

Free trade

Free trade

Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...

with the United States has resulted in continued exposure to the U.S. system. Since the United States is Canada's largest trading partner and vice versa, Canadian exporters and importers must be accustomed to dealing in U.S. customary units as well as metric.

Agriculture

Canada uses an Avery or imperial bushel (36.369 litres) when selling Oats, Wheat, and Grain. When dealing with the US oat markets though, special attention must be paid to the definition of bushel weight because US uses a Winchester bushel (35.239 liters) In livestock auction markets, cattle are sold in dollars per hundredweight

Hundredweight

The hundredweight or centum weight is a unit of mass defined in terms of the pound . The definition used in Britain differs from that used in North America. The two are distinguished by the terms long hundredweight and short hundredweight:* The long hundredweight is defined as 112 lb, which...

(short), whereas hogs are sold in dollars per hundred kilograms.

Health care

In the health care system, SI units dominate (for example, for measurements of blood cholesterol

Cholesterol

Cholesterol is a complex isoprenoid. Specifically, it is a waxy steroid of fat that is produced in the liver or intestines. It is used to produce hormones and cell membranes and is transported in the blood plasma of all mammals. It is an essential structural component of mammalian cell membranes...

, the units are millimole per litre, whereas they are milligram per decilitre in the United States). Some physicians chart patient height and weight in either unit, depending on when they started practising, though most growth charts are provided in metric units and the majority of hospitals document such parameters in metric units, but dieticians still use kilocalories, and doctors use millimetres of mercury. While these units are metric, they are not SI units.

Engineering

Because most fasteners, machine parts, pumps, piping, and all building materials are sold in imperial or U.S. customary units, many mechanical and civil engineers in Canada mainly use imperial units.. On the other hand, many chemical, nuclear and electrical engineers and engineering physicists employ metric units. As in the United States, Canadian engineers are educated in both systems and are keenly aware of the differences between the imperial, metric and U.S. customary systems.

Trades

Trades associated with machine work, such as machinists, automotive, and heavy duty technicians, frequently use both metric and imperial. Machines made in Canada often incorporate parts from other countries and thus the finished product may have both metric and imperial parts. Farm and industrial equipment manufactured in Canada will most often use imperial fasteners and structural steel, but fluid capacities are always listed in metric.

Building trades such as plumbing

Plumbing

Plumbing is the system of pipes and drains installed in a building for the distribution of potable drinking water and the removal of waterborne wastes, and the skilled trade of working with pipes, tubing and plumbing fixtures in such systems. A plumber is someone who installs or repairs piping...

and carpentry

Carpentry

A carpenter is a skilled craftsperson who works with timber to construct, install and maintain buildings, furniture, and other objects. The work, known as carpentry, may involve manual labor and work outdoors....

often use imperial units. Rough timber, drywall, plywood, fasteners, pipes, and tubing are all sold in imperial units. Nails in hardware stores are measured in inches but sold in metric weight packages.

Electricians in every country use metric units such as volts and amperes, but motors and engines are still quoted in horsepower

Horsepower

Horsepower is the name of several units of measurement of power. The most common definitions equal between 735.5 and 750 watts.Horsepower was originally defined to compare the output of steam engines with the power of draft horses in continuous operation. The unit was widely adopted to measure the...

(of which several definitions exist). Electric car motors are rated in kilowatts. However, Canada uses, among other things, the U.S. American Wire Gauge

American wire gauge

American wire gauge , also known as the Brown & Sharpe wire gauge, is a standardized wire gauge system used since 1857 predominantly in the United States and Canada for the diameters of round, solid, nonferrous, electrically conducting wire...

standard instead of the square millimetre (mm²) used in the IEC 60228

IEC 60228

IEC 60228 is the International Electrotechnical Commission's international standard on conductors of insulated cables.Among other things, it defines a set of standard wire cross-sectional areas:...

standard of the International Electrotechnical Commission

International Electrotechnical Commission

The International Electrotechnical Commission is a non-profit, non-governmental international standards organization that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies – collectively known as "electrotechnology"...

, although the Canadian Electrical Code

Canadian Electrical Code

The Canadian Electrical Code, CE code, or CSA C22.1 is a standard published by the Canadian Standards Association pertaining to the installation and maintenance of electrical equipment in Canada....

includes both in its regulations. For example, the usage of either 14 AWG or 2.5 mm size wire for a given circuit would be acceptable. Conduit sizes are in inch diameters, although some manufacturers include the metric size printed on the conduits (for example, inch (13 mm), inch (16 mm), inch (20 mm), etc).

Firearms

Imperial units also remain in common use in firearms and ammunition. Imperial measures are still used in the description of cartridge

Cartridge (firearms)

A cartridge, also called a round, packages the bullet, gunpowder and primer into a single metallic case precisely made to fit the firing chamber of a firearm. The primer is a small charge of impact-sensitive chemical that may be located at the center of the case head or at its rim . Electrically...

types, even when the cartridge is of relatively recent invention (e.g. 0.204 Ruger, 0.17 HMR, where the calibre is expressed in decimal fractions of an inch

Inch

An inch is the name of a unit of length in a number of different systems, including Imperial units, and United States customary units. There are 36 inches in a yard and 12 inches in a foot...

). However, ammunition which is classified in metric already is still kept metric (e.g. 9 mm, 7.62 mm). In the manufacture of ammunition, bullet and powder weights are expressed in terms of grains for both metric and imperial cartridges.

Print

Canada uses the inch-based US Letter paper standard, rather than the metric-based A4 paper size used throughout most of the world.

Air transportation

Luggage restrictions and limits at Canadian airports are in imperial values with soft metric conversion values. Altitude is measured in feet, and speed in knots.

Reinstatement of the imperial system

In 2005, the Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

government announced changes to the secondary school mathematics curriculum that would allow imperial units to be taught along with metric units. This marked a departure from previous governments' efforts to make sure that the curriculum used only the metric system. This was done in light of the refusal or reluctance of much of the private sector to metricate; thus students had been leaving school unprepared for the units used in the workplace. Many other provinces and territories also include the imperial system of measurements as part of their educational curriculum.

External links

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