In response to the US going off the rails, I’m seeing lots of push to buy Canadian products as much as possible and I love it.

But it’s never that simple, is it?

Easiest case: You can buy leather bags and wallets from Adrian Klis. These are made in Canada, by a Canadian company, from Canadian materials (Buffalo hide leather).

Unfortunately, neither manufacturing or ownership are that straightforward most of the time.

• Creemore Springs is a small brewery in Ontario, using local product and brewing locally. AND they’re owned by the Molson Coors Beverage Company - a cross-border multinational.
• Likewise, Canada Goose (winter jackets) is now owned by Bain Capital in the USA.
• A lot of us use Melitta filters in our drip coffee makers. Melitta is a German company that manufactures in the USA. (FYI, Technivorm filters are manufactured and headquarted in The Netherlands.)
• Coca Cola is unabashedly American, and has backed militant extremists in other countries; but the bottle of coke you buy in the store likely came from one of their five bottling plants in Canada, bottled by a Canadian.
• Aylmer’s soups are Canadian through-and-through. Everything other than soup under the Aylmer brand and logo is now owned by Conagra.
• Everyone knows that Costco is American, but they’ve also got a long history of paying above average, giving better than average benefits, and standing up to the excesses of capitalism and fascism.
• Of course, “Canadian” is no guarantee of “good” either for products or for companies. Loblaws has spent decades gouging customers (often illegally) and Shopify’s executives are advocating for a Canadian DOGE.

I’m not suggesting for a second we throw our hands up in the air and give up, but I’d like to see a bit more clarity on all of the “Buy Canadian” lists.

• Country of manufacture.
• Country of components.
• Company headquarters.
• Ultimate company ownership.

None of this is going to be as easy as “buy the thing with a maple leaf” but we need to be more aware of how we’re supporting the US or other economies, either deliberately or inadvertently.