Canada Just Changed the .22 LR Market Forever

You are standing at a gun counter in a strip mall somewhere in Ontario, and you are holding a brick of five hundred .22 Long Rifle cartridges. The clerk rings it up. Fifty-six dollars and ninety-nine cents, Canadian, before tax. You do the math without meaning to. Eleven cents a round. For the cheapest, simplest, oldest cartridge in the world. The one that is supposed to cost next to nothing.
The fluorescent lights hum. Somewhere behind you, a kid is asking his dad about a lever-action .22 on the rack. You glance down at the brick in your hands — plain cardboard, "500 Rounds" stamped on the side, no different in the hand than the same brick would have felt a decade ago. That's the strange part. Nothing about the object changed. The cartridge inside is the same design it's been since before your grandfather was born. It's the number on the till that changed.