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.
It’s great that you’ve pointed this out and I hope there’s more awareness about it. In practice, it’s not hard: Buy from candian-owned small businesses who manufacture in Canada.
In my not-at-all-humble opinion, most of your examples are all shit you shouldn’t be buying in the first place:
We have copious amounts of local craft beer. Never buy the big brands, they’re all swill. If you actually drink craft beer, you’ll know which brands, like Creemore and Millstreet, are fake craft.
Nobody should be buying anything from Coca-Cola in the 21st century. We’ve known pop is terrible for your health for like 50 years. They’re a shit company who is the biggest polluter of plastics in the world.
Canada Goose is for tools with no taste. By the time any trendy fashion company gets bought out, it’s not cool anymore.
All we have to do as a nation is just put that little extra effort into learning about what we’re buying and making different choices, and it’s actually great that we’re all doing that because we should have been doing it all along.
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It’s great that you’ve pointed this out and I hope there’s more awareness about it. In practice, it’s not hard: Buy from candian-owned small businesses who manufacture in Canada.
In my not-at-all-humble opinion, most of your examples are all shit you shouldn’t be buying in the first place:
We have copious amounts of local craft beer. Never buy the big brands, they’re all swill. If you actually drink craft beer, you’ll know which brands, like Creemore and Millstreet, are fake craft.
Nobody should be buying anything from Coca-Cola in the 21st century. We’ve known pop is terrible for your health for like 50 years. They’re a shit company who is the biggest polluter of plastics in the world.
Canada Goose is for tools with no taste. By the time any trendy fashion company gets bought out, it’s not cool anymore.
All we have to do as a nation is just put that little extra effort into learning about what we’re buying and making different choices, and it’s actually great that we’re all doing that because we should have been doing it all along.
Well, they were examples. I’m sorry you didn’t like them.