Butter in produced in north america seems to be mostly pretty bad. I think it has a lot to do with how milk is marketed, low price is everything. So the dairies are dominated by volume-over-quality, a ton of holstiens and whatever cheapest feed can be found. Starting from there doesn't lead anywhere good, for butter or cheese.

A friend who lived there (Montreal, or maybe it was when they were in Ottawa?) told me the import duty on European butter was 300%. So you can get some good imports, but super expensive. And the local "artisinal" stuff is mostly not as good as even KerryGold but also stupid expensive, because they only compete with those imports.