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On the morning of Nov. 24, 1997, the margarine police struck at the Consomat grocery store in the Quebec town of Alma, near the Saguenay. They'd heard that Unilever Canada Ltd. had illegally imported about 500 tubs of butter-colored Country Crock margarine from the United States to sell at the store.
It didn't take much detective work to find the stash, mind you. The company had alerted the media that it would deliberately break the law to challenge Quebec's status as the only place -- possibly in the world -- where colored margarine is illegal.
Quebec government agriculture inspectors rose to the bait. They had to save local residents from the perils of this pale yellow menace that they could mistake for butter and end up spreading on their toast. Residents must be protected and, more importantly, so must the province's powerful dairy industry.
Three months after the great Alma raid, however, Unilever still hadn't been charged. So its lawyers filed a motion in Quebec Superior Court on Feb. 5 to have the color margarine ban declared unconstitutional and quash the seizure. Unilever is arguing that Quebec's distinct margarine policy violates 11 laws, regulations, decrees, and federal-provincial and international agreements, including NAFTA. It also argues...