Wait, you mean marketing to kids is illegal?

The provincial government's consumer-affairs watchdog recently slapped General Mills Canada with a $2,000 fine after it learned that General Mills and Lucky Charms were using the cereal's website to advertise to kids under the age of 13. Kids could log on to play games with the Lucky, the cereal's leprechaun, but were exposed to a pop-up ad letting site users know that a new version of the nutritionally questionable (at the very least) cereal in Canada.

Advertising aimed at consumers under the age of 13 is technically illegal – so if that's the case, why does my four-year-old daughter ask me to buy her every toy that pops up on a Saturday-morning commercial?

Seriously, does the Quebec government just pick and choose cases to prosecute? For instance, last night on Treehouse TV, the kids' cable channel chock-full of wholesome programming about sharing and some other stuff, I was witness to a program that was brought to us by Band-Aid, accompanied by a screen-size photo of the box the bandages come in, featuring the enormous, smiling faces of Dora the Explorer and her cash-cow cousin Diego. If you have any children under the age of seven, or even if you live near children under the age of seven, you're probably aware of these two licensing giants, whose likenesses adorn everything from lunch boxes, to cans of pasta, to toothpaste, to laundry baskets to a t-shirt-and-shorts set that your child can wear to dance along with Dora on a video.

This time, though, the giant, smiling faces of Dora and Diego were clearly not on screen because they were trying to entice kids to nag their parents into paying double for the Johnson & Johnson product, rather than the half-price house-brand bandages at the store.

Guess what? It's usually the same bandage, but in a different box.

And that was just last night.

The fact of the matter is that no matter how much we as West Islanders, Quebecers and Canadians fight or rail against the plethora of kid-centric advertising out there, parents have to learn the word 'no,' and apply it consistently. The reason people market to kids is because it works. Parents are often too frazzled, overtired and stressed out to weather the storm that comes after a request from your children that goes denied.

It's what I've done at my house. When my daughter climbs into bed with us and turns on cartoons in the wee hours of weekend mornings while we half-slumber, she often asks us for whatever toy she just happened to see advertised. My wife treats these requests as though our daughter were an adult, explaining things to the four-year-old rationally about money, spending of money and responsibility.

I just shut her down and say 'no.' Works every time. I swear.