American businesses in Canada and the maple leaf

Factual Questions
1

McDonald’s in Russia never bore a hammer and sickle in the logo, and Burger King/Hungry Jack’s in Australia don’t paste kangaroos or koala bears on their signs out of national pride. However, for Canada based outlets of U.S. retail and restaurant chains, the corporate logo is usually altered to incorporate a maple leaf somewhere, as if to say “Wendy’s is really Canadian – look!”

What’s the deal with the “stick a maple leaf somewhere in the logo” rule of many U.S. based restaurant and retail chain operating in Canada, anyhow? Is there a law, similar to the one that bans MTV and ESPN north of the Border, stating that U.S. companies have to “Canadianize” their corporate identity?

2

This may or may not be the reason, but I find it important on TV commercials and company propaganda to know if promotion X is available here or in the USA.

3

Just a WAG, but isnt the McDonalds maple leaf located in the place of the apostrophe? I heard something about it being a concession to Bill 101 in Québec, since apostrophe’s aren’t used in the French language. Just like Dunkin’ Donuts is advertised as “Dunkin Donuts” (no apostrophe). Although I thought there was some part of Bill 101 that allowed for American chains to keep their usual name, it might be to “appease” the OLF. I really should look into reading the bill one day…

4

Well, Im wrong about the Maple leaf location for McDonalds (its actually on the big M). Although Dunkin Dounuts still has no apostrophe…

5

There is no law forcing the use of a maple leaf.

The use of the maple leaf is only for marketing, and is decided upon entirely by the companies.

6

Huh? There’s no law banning MTV or ESPN in Canada. I live in Canada and I can get both from my satellite TV provider. I don’t, because their Canadian equivalents are generally better-quality and (in the case of sports in particular) cater to my idiosyncrasies better. Curling rocks! The law you may be thinking of is that cable and satellite providers are required to provide MuchMusic and TSN, along with a bunch of other ‘core’ stations (Newsworld, Newsnet, the Parliamentary Channel, …)

Yes, we have some weird laws up here. But I don’t think even in Canada would we be draconian enough to force people to put maple leaves on their logos. Last I checked, nor Burger King nor Wal-Mart has a maple leaf anywhere on their logos. Shell definitely doesn’t; I used to work there.

7

Actually, registered trademarks are exempt from Bill 101. Also, proper names (e.g. people’s names or place names) are exempt. Drive around Quebec City and you’ll see “Wendy’s” and “Canadian Tire” and “Tim Horton’s” and whatnot.

8

Somebody who is more familiar with Canadian business law would know for sure, but I think that it is because technically, foreign businesses (and that includes American ones) are not allowed to operate directly in Canada.

Of course, one sees evidence to the contrary all the time–Canada has Wal-Marts, Ford and GM and Chrysler factories, Xerox machines, Coca-Cola, and many McDonald’s and Starbucks, among other US-based companies.

But really, the companies with the maple leaf in their logo are Canadian. They have been incorporated under Canadian law as Ford of Canada, or McDonald’s of Canada, or IBM of Canada. The foreign parent generally owns all the shares of the Canadian company (thereby raking in all the profits), but the Canadian head office does the planning and runs the daily affairs of the Canadian branches or outlets or factories or whatever.

Since they are technically Canadian companies, they show it by using a maple leaf or some other identifiable Canadian icon somewhere in the logo.

I apologize for having no cites for this, but this attempt at answering the OP comes out of my experience. Some years ago, I was working for the Canadian branch office of a small US-based firm. The head office in Tampa, Florida decided it didn’t want to set the Canadian branch up as a Canadian company, and went ahead and operated the Canadian branch as if it were in the US–they transplanted American managers (who reported directly to Tampa) to the office in Toronto.

They did keep a small bank account locally for payroll and other expenses, so my paycheques were in Canadian dollars although they showed my zip code (!) and SSN (!). There were other oddities associated with the setup, but I won’t go into them here.

Anyway, this did not go over well with the Canadian authorities, who, IIRC, basically told the company that it had to incorporate under Canadian law if it wanted to run a Canadian operation. It also had to employ Canadians as officers of the resulting Canadian company. The upshot was that head office in Tampa decided that complying with Canadian law was too much of a hassle, so they closed the Toronto office, packed up, and went home.

Oh, and they laid us all off too. Thank you very much, Tampa.

Anyway, that’s my answer. But if anybody knows (and can cite) Canadian business law, I’ll defer to their answer.

9

[hijack] The McDonalds in Moscow was originally conceived by, and opened by, McDonalds of Canada (I don’t know if there is a connection anymore) [byejack]

10

Wasn’t the Moscow McDonald’s only started after the 1989 revolutions? I seem to recall pictures with the Russian tricolour flag under the middle leg* of the McDonald’s M, but no hammer-and-sickle.

Where the maple leaf is in Canadian McDonald’s* logos.

**How the heck do you pluralise something that is already a possessive? I was forced to write my way around it…

11

Not maple leafs, but close. I believe that anything funded by the federal government has to put the ‘Canada wordmark’ (the logo of the word ‘Canada’ with the little maple leaf flag over the final ‘a’)in its advertising. This is why Via has replaced the restrained and tasteful Canadian flags on the side of its railway carriages with grapgics of much larger, brighter ‘billowing’ flags, and added the wordmark in the middle of the carriage below the windows. Très tacky, lau mi.

Example requirement for screen credit in a movie.

I could be wrong though…

12

Not maple leafs, but close. I believe that anything funded by the federal government has to put the ‘Canada wordmark’ (the logo of the word ‘Canada’ with the little maple leaf flag over the final ‘a’)in its advertising. This is why Via has replaced the restrained and tasteful Canadian flags on the side of its railway carriages with grapgics of much larger, brighter ‘billowing’ flags, and added the wordmark in the middle of the carriage below the windows. Très tacky, lau mi.

Example requirement for screen credit in a movie.

I could be wrong though…

13

The old Burger King logo did… I think they only changed in the last 2 - 3 years…
I remember when I moved to Canada that the maple leafs on company logos really stood out to me… virtually everything had it on…

14

Uhm, no.

But it does make a lot of sense for companies to set up a Canadian subsiduary. That way only the subsiduary must comply with canadian law. This is hardly unique to Canada and happens in the reverse as well. The maple leaf generally just indicates that and certainly isn’t a legal requirement, just a choice by the company to appeal to patriotism. It isn’t always completely dishonest, MacDonalds franchises here tend to be owned by locals.

Automobiles are a bit different due to the historical impact of the auto pact which was negotiate long before free trade. US companies were required to have a certain amount of production in Canada. not sure what the current agreement is in this respect.

As for sunspaces comment, yes, there is a standardization that immediately lets you know your dealing with a government entity. The film board insists on its credit as do any others providing financing for the film.

15

I’ve seen pictures of the Moscow McDonald’s with the flag of the USSR. Russia didn’t revert to its old flag until 1992.

16

In a similar matter, McDonald’s restaurants in Serbia faced a challenge during the Kosovo War:

To help overcome animosity toward a quintessential American trademark, the local restaurants promoted the McCountry, a domestic pork burger with paprika garnish. As a national flourish to evoke Serbian identity and pride,they produced posters and lapel buttons showing the golden arches topped with a traditional Serbian cap called the sajkaca (pronounced shy-KACH-a). They also handed out free cheeseburgers at anti-NATO rallies.

(http://www.nettime.org/nettime.w3archive/199909/msg00048.html)

17

Yes, that’s all I was able to find quickly. But I seem to remeber reading in the paper that any entity funded by the federal gonvernment had to display the Canada logo. Hence the train logos. And I think there was a giant one on the car park at Pearson Airport. If so, it’s probably gone because of the sale to the Greater Toronto Airports Authority and the subsequent reconstruction program.

If you look really closely at the Golden Arches in the larger version of the picture of the opening of the first Moscow McDonald’s (click on the small picture) on this McDonalds Russia page, you can see a red square below the M that is presumably the Soviet flag. So I guess I was wrong. :slight_smile:

dqa, do you have a link to the McDonald’s Serbia site? There is no mention of Serbia or Yugoslavia on McDonalds.com. I wonder whether it’s a subsidiary of another national McDonald’s, perhaps Russia?

Interestingly, from the mcdonalds.com pages, McDonald’s in Turkey, Argentina, Finland and Japan do not seem to have a local flag or symbol in their logo. McDonald’s Russia does. McDonald’s Chile has the word Chile beneath the M. McDonald’s Germany uses a red trapezoid beneath their M that looks like the older style of beside-the-road sign. And McDonald’s HongKong uses… okay, this is getting a little obsessive. Suffice it to say that national symbols in the McDonalds logo seem to be relatively uncommon.

But my travel book was right. I visited McDonald’s in eight different countries, and the McNuggets tasted the same in all of them.

I’m not sure that they’re from this planet…

18

Hmmmm… but that’s impossible… because no two countries that have ever had a McD’s have ever gone to war against one another…

19

Via Rail is a crown corporation owned by the federal federal government. Other federal crown corporations, such as the cbc and nfb, have not chosen to adopt the standardized logo nor is it present on any number of federally funded projects around my city.

IIRC, the ubiquitous nature of the logo actually stems from the 1970s push to make the federal government bilingual. All departments were renamed for easier translation and all got the same format.