Does anyone know why the new laura mercier tinted moisturizer has spf 30 in the advertising and US but is sold without spf in canada?

[meggsb]

if anyone has any thoughts i would love to know! 😊

[taytay10133]

I just had a facial in Montreal and I remember the esthetician said something along the lines of the fact that Canada is not allowed to advertise products as dual products. they can either be a tinted moisturizer or a SPF but not both. in my case the product I bought was the elta md clear sunscreen which was actually advertised as a moisturizer in Canada but it is a sunscreen.

[dyslexia]

The tl;dr boils down to cost. Canada has stricter regs but they also charge a few thousand *per product* not per brand to put an SPF claim on the packaging (it was over $5000/year last I knew but that was years ago and has surely gone up). Most companies would be happy to re-test and recertify once and be done w/ it but the massive annual fees mean it's just more cost effective to change the packaging or put a sticker over the SPF rating.

The Workaround: Check the ingredients list for the product on US side vs Canadian side. If list is the same, it has the same level of SPF and the brand just did not pay the required extortion-level fees to advertise that.

[Tifiny]

@dyslexia thanks for the info

[SalBing]

@meggsb  As @nche mentioned, Canada has more tight SPF regulation than in US.  In order to sale in Canada a lot of the time company will just tape over the SPF sign in the packaging.  They should really be the same product

[nche]

It’s due to stricter Health Canada regulations. 

Check this thread 

https://community.sephora.com/t5/Oh-Canada/Spf-not-in-Canadian-products/td-p/4443252