When the owner of Fabutan Suntan Studios (www.fabutan.com) – a chain of 150 stores throughout Canada – began using “positive vitamin D and tanning” information to bolster his business, the Competition Bureau (their version of our Federal Trade Commission) launched an attack, claiming he was “misleading the public through use of false advertising”. Not one to shy away from a good fight, McNabb immediately went on the offensive, and the fur – as they say up yonder in the land of Mounties and tearful NHL fans – has begun to fly.
By nature, Canadians are a proud, forthright people who never react meekly to affronts, whether they are personal or political. When Hitler invaded Poland and France, Canadian volunteer pilots were the first to sign up to fly British Spitfires and Hurricanes over the English Channel. Elite Canadian ground troops were instrumental in taking the cities Kafji and Basra in Eastern Iraq during the first Gulf War, and played significant roles in quelling the internecine violence that plagued Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Having gained a reputation as fierce warriors in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, the Taliban of Afghanistan most often chose to avoid the areas in which the Canadian military was operating, especially in mountainous areas, where pakols (those funky, traditional Afghan hats) made excellent targets for highly skilled snipers who had honed their skills targeting elk, moose and Grisly at 2000 yards in British Columbia.
Unfortunately for most Canadian businesses, however, a good deal of effort is spent and wasted on defending themselves against a kind of socialist terrorism doled out in great amounts by their own national government. Many provinces have, or are in the process of getting rid of leftist politicians who, in the past, wreaked havoc on the middle class, but scores of them have succeeded in re-entrenching themselves within the protective walls of Ottawa, the capitol. Whereas taxation without representation is an axiomatic cornerstone of the American Constitution, Canadians have suffered greatly under the greediness and improprieties of regime functionaries. Rampant collectivism virtually ruined the country’s economy in the early 1990s, causing many businesses to close and head south, or overseas. Happily, a new generation of plucky Canadian entrepreneurs took the matter to the polling booths and had the small business environment revitalized by the onset of the Millennium. Doug McNabb’s Fabutan was a notable participant in that movement.
Objectivist observers of the manner in which the Competition Bureau went after Fabutan would be amiss not to notice the fact that McNabb was one of the first to convey the vitamin D message, years ago. So, why attack now? Could it be that the socialist bureaucrats in Ottawa are jealous of his success? Could it be that the traditionally shrill and unreasonable anti-sun press and medical community are reeling from the onslaught of vitamin D data brought to light by Dr. William B. Grant’s SUNCARC (www.sunarc.com) or Dr. John J. Cannell’s Cholecalciferol Council (www.cholecalciferol-council.com), and are forcing the government to do their dirty work? And to what extent, if at all, does Mr. Raymond Pierce, Deputy Director of the Canadian Competition Bureau and Fabutan’s Antagonist-In-Chief, really grasp the science that speaks overwhelmingly in favor of moderate sun exposure as a mitigating factor for MS and many deadly internal cancers?
My feeling is that once Dr. Grant and his colleagues are through with them, it will be made quite apparent as to how much foot the mischievous Ottawans have in fact inserted into their collective mouths. Suddenly, a poignant question arises: If the sun is really such a bad thing, then why do we down here in Florida keep running into the bumpers of more and more cars with Ontario license plates, putting along at 50 MPH in the left lane on I-75 each year? Shutting down indoor tanning salons in Canada would only add more Canadian citizens to the employment rosters and make the roads in Clearwater less safe. Oh, and Mr. Raymond… please forget the fact that tens of thousands more Canadians will suffer needlessly and die prematurely, as a result of your misguided agenda.
Canadians:
Your tax dollars at work.
Americans: Don’t let this
happen here.
FIRE
IN THE GREAT
“WHITE” NORTH
