I am not sure if mintlocale even touches this, but here's the issue:
~$ printenv | grep PAPER
LC_PAPER=en_CA.UTF-8
PAPERSIZE=a4
WHAT???
For those who don't know, Canada uses US paper sizes, so the most common size here is "letter".
This is really odd, but explains why every piece of software I am running defaults to A4 paper size before I set it right. However, /etc/papersize file contains "letter".
It's a fresh upgrade to Mint 21.1