To show support for Canada amid a trade war with the U.S., John Mackay says he tries to only buy Canadian products during grocery runs.
That’s why the 81-year-old from Tillsonburg, Ont., said he’s complained to Metro multiple times after seeing orange juice with pulp by Irrésistible — a Metro-owned private-label brand — with a red maple leaf next to the price tag on the shelf.
“Since when are we growing oranges in Canada?” said Mackay, whose home is roughly 115 kilometres west of Hamilton. “I was pissed off.”
Loblaws is labeling frozen Minute Maid orange juice with a lil maple leaf. I have a really hard time believing anything other than the aluminum lids are Canadian.
Growing oranges in a greenhouse in Canada is not impossible . . . but you’re not going to do it on the scale or at the price you’d need to make store-brand orange juice from them. Selling the actual oranges as premium produce in select Canadian markets would be possible, although not many people would be able to afford them.
The problem is that the standards for “Made in [country]” labels are pretty lax. We need different ones for “Packaged in Canada”, “Processed in Canada (but with some foreign ingredients)”, “Made in Canada by a foreign-owned company”, and “Actually 100% Made in Canada from domestic ingredients by a Canadian company”.
Or maybe what we really need is a, “The US had a hand in producing this” label. I don’t think most of us have much problem with buying something from, say, Belgium or Ecuador.
We need different ones for “Packaged in Canada”, “Processed in Canada (but with some foreign ingredients)”, “Made in Canada by a foreign-owned company”, and “Actually 100% Made in Canada from domestic ingredients by a Canadian company”.
We also need labels those that say" “imported by asdf Canada inc” to instead say where the hell they were imported from.
There are a lot of Canadian products that are only “Canadian” products. Even something like Old Dutch chips – which (when sold in Canada) are made in Canada by Canadian employees using Canadian ingredients… Is a privately held business owned by Americans. These companies are effectively part of the funnel of capitalism – profits are extracted from Canadians and sent elsewhere.
And yes, I get it, sometimes foreign investment is nice. Canadian companies invest in foreign markets too. But when you’re in a trade war with your neighbour, you want to know not just where it is made, but where the money flows.
Even buying Canadian products at Walmart Canada (an somewhat independent Canadian subsidiary of Walmart in the US) still feeds some of the profits on the sale to the US.
Capitalism is a funnel. Too much profit is funnelled south.
Loblaws labelled 35 per cent of all products online as Prepared in Canada.
…
“[Prepared in Canada] is not a really rigorous standard to meet,” he said.
Unlike a Product of Canada, which means virtually all (98 per cent) of its major ingredients, processing and the labour used to make the food product must be Canadian, there is no similar threshold for items labelled as Prepared in Canada
Marketplace shared its findings with experts who say grocery stores are trying to capitalize on the country’s wave of patriotism, noting that a vague definition of what makes a product Canadian is in the best interest of retailers, not shoppers.
Basically, it seems like we cannot trust the business to do anything in our best interest. We have to continue to do the work. Hopefully The CFIA will create a more rigorous standard for labelling in the near future.
Basically, it seems like we cannot trust the business to do anything in our best interest.
That is far from a new thing.
Businesses only serve our best interest when that happens to also be the more profitable thing for them to do.
Reminds me of olive oil in Europe. As long as it is processed and packaged in Italy it can be labeled Italian olive oil, regardless if the olives were grown elsewhere.
