As far as I know, most US-based companies don't like doing chance-based giveaways with the potential to have a winner in Canada. Even though it's not that hard, it's still extra work.
In this case though, the allegation is that the chance-based giveaway was still operated and promoted in Canada, but the prize-distribution was skewed so that no prizes went there.
Which, from a regulatory point of view, seems strictly worse than running an honest game.
Generally, Canadian law doesn't allow games of pure chance to be run for profit, outside of a handful of exceptions like the government-run lotteries.
So to run this type of promotion in Canada, you need to set up a façade of presenting it as a game of skill or mixed skill/chance instead, which usually involves something like having a prospective winner answer a math question. Look up "skill-testing question Canada" for more info.
And Québec in particular has piles of extra rules on top of that, which often leads to "offer not valid in Québec" as part of the promotion.
Great summary! I remember being young and seeing lottery tickets with simple math problems like “25 * 4 - 20 = ?” to get around the “no games of chance” laws.
My brother won a Sony Watchman (mini-TV) and we all double checked his math before redeeming.
That doesn't make sense as a motivation, though, because they followed those regulations anyways. They ran it in Canada every single year. Heck, last year they customized it by renaming all of the pieces after Canadian landmarks [1].
