I suspect that the lack of butter in croissants is simply because the cost of margarine is very slightly lower than butter and thus the profit on those with margarine is higher. A half percent reduction in material cost might be a two percent increase in profits.

And as long as a substantial fraction of the customers keep buying the inferior product there will be no incentive for the introduction or wider marketing of the better one.

So stop buying crap food and tell all your family and friends to do the same.

A croissant without butter is not really a croissant in my opinion and as far as I can tell they all have butter here (Norway), here's an example: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... (they come from the Netherlands).

It’s also a side-effect of the dairy industry controlling the butter market: so they put out one poor quality product and buyers have little choice:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/food-tren...

> This is effectively a regressive tax. A tax that disproportionately impacts those with young children. Largely a tax on parents

It’s a good thing the government of Canada do not suggest you give dairy products to your children anymore then :-)

There aren't that many of them, but they have an outsized influence on politics because of the role they play in the economics of rural life. Farmers are the major employers for young rural people, they pay for local services to a greater degree, and their families tend to have been active in the local economy for a long time. When the farmers in an area are doing well, typically so is the rest of the economy and vice versa.

Calling it a tax on parents is a serious reach. And while the US has dumping prices that are lower than Canada's (e.g. when they are faced with dumping product down the drain so instead pour it into an area for little), in many areas and times the prices are not far off the US.

The lack of butter croissants has nothing to do with it, as an aside. We simply have a mediocre croissant palate in Canada, so the general market variety are horrendous.

> The lack of butter croissants has nothing to do with it, as an aside

It has everything to do with a centralized marketer that can put out any grade product it wants, and consumers can either buy it at the price they say or switch to margarine/vegoil.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/food-tren...

Expensive inputs further encourages substitutions, especially when the expensive input wasn’t great.

Individual people may not respond well to incentives, but industrial buyers sure do.

The grade argument is debatable. Yes, if you want a bonafide, completely authentic as in France croissant it is less easily obtained (sidenote -- there are makers who do make the higher fat, lower water butter, but there is very little demand), but if a maker is choosing between a imperceptibly different Canadian standard butter and margarine (the former indistinguishable, the latter a vile abomination), and you think that minuscule difference is the reason, you are misled.

Further it isn't expensive. Large quantity butters purchases, including special higher fat versions that aren't generally on grocery stores, are an insubstantial percentage of the cost of making a croissant.

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/canadian-croissant-...

But again, the reason croissants are generally horrendous in Canada is because people just don't care. If people don't care you end up with the weird bready-things that are marketed as croissants. This is a bit of a personal peeve having just gotten back from Belgium/France a couple of months ago, and being spoiled by every hotel having extremely good croissants.

The debate over supply management is revisited at every election, and overwhelmingly Canadians buy into the notion that supply management has benefits in certain industries.

As an aside -- it's cheaper to buy milk and butter in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and virtually every other urban center in Canada than in San Francisco, NYC, LA, or any other large US center. US dairy dumps their excess on secondary markets like Detroit, and it's always the "Windsor versus Detroit" sort of comparison that we hear parroted.