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.
Yup. And we aren’t going to be 100% and mistakes will be made. The important this is we just keep putting effort into it the boycott will get stronger and stronger as we learn more about where products are made. And really most of the effort is going to be in the beginning, once you’ve figured out what your new preferred brands are, it starts getting easier.
A little tip I find useful… look at the products in your cupboards and take note of which products are US and which are not. It’s a lot more chill to do this at home than in the grocery store. Makes grocery shopping go a little faster when you don’t have to look at the labels of everything while in the store.
This is an EXCELLENT point, and I really want to emphasize it as much as possible. We’re changing our habits at the moment, and that’s hard as hell to do. Once we’ve changed them, then maintenance and tweaks are trivial in comparison.