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An irreversible process

Broadcast Date: May 8, 1974

With Canada firmly in the process of switching "gradually and gently" to metric, there's now news that the United States has rejected a metric bill. In this 1974 clip, Peter Gzowski asks the Canadian Metric Commission's Paul Boire if this news will be a setback for Canada's metrication process. Boire dismisses that notion. He says that although the United States is dragging its heels, "I don't think there's any question that the U.S. is going metric, because it's something that's inevitable. The whole world has gone metric."

Either way, says Boire, metrication is already an irreversible process for Canada. As Boire and Gzowski discuss, road signs are starting to include kilometres, some radio stations are already beginning to report weather in Celsius, and schools are currently reworking the curriculum to include metric lessons.

An irreversible process

• In 1974, toothpaste became the first consumer product to be sold in grams in Canada, according to the Oxford Companion to Canadian History.

• The Trudeau government soon decided metric conversion would have to be mandatory, despite the fact that the 1970 White Paper said it wouldn't be. Because different committees were responsible for Canada's metric conversion at different levels, there were various mandatory metric deadlines occurring throughout the 1970s and early '80s. Most of these deadlines were enforceable by law under the Weights and Measures Act, punishable by fines, business closures and possibly even prison sentences.

• Following are a few of the deadlines (some of which were heavily fought by the industries involved):
- 1975: weather forecasts must use Celsius
- 1976: pre-packaged food must declare mass or volume in metric
- 1977: all new cars must be built with metric speedometers and odometers; all road signs must be posted in metric
- 1980: retail sales of floor coverings and home furnishings must be in metric
- 1981: gasoline and diesel fuel must be sold in litres
- 1983: retail scales, such as those in grocery stores, must measure in metric

• A 1971 U.S. government report called "Report to the Congress: A Metric America, A Decision Whose Time Has Come" recommended that the United States convert to metric within 10 years. The switch seemed inevitable. In fact, in a 2001 Insight on the News article, an American teacher recalled, "When I was teaching in the seventies, I thought (metric) was going to take over." But for a number of reasons the country kept resisting metric conversion, which was never made mandatory in the States.

• Today (2005), despite the best efforts of American metric advocacy groups such as the U.S. Metric Association, the United States continues to reject the wide scale adoption of metric in favour of the imperial system. Besides the United States, the only two other countries that have not officially adopted the metric system are Myanmar and Liberia.

An irreversible process

Medium: Radio

Program: This Country in the Morning

Broadcast Date: May 8, 1974

Guest(s): Paul Boire

Host: Peter Gzowski

Duration: 9:33

Last updated:
Jan. 14, 2005