Yeah, sobeys has popcorn kernels with the maple leaf on it. I inquired in store if that meant that the corn was produced in Canada, and they said yes.

Inquired with head office when I got home, and it’s actually from the States. No fucking Canadian connection, other than it being sold in Canada, apparently.

For anyone looking, Giant Tiger has popcorn kernels that are a product of Canada, so the best you can get in a retail store.

It’s not like Loblaws has ever lied and misled people…

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 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.

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.

It sucks that grocery stores make these labels based on where the company that sells these products come from. I mean, CocaCola and Red Bull both have a maple leaf tag at my usual grocery store because they have subsidiaries that are Canada based, though I last I heard the syrup as well as the bottles come from the US for Coke, and is only bottled in Canada.

At the very least, outside of the produce isle, it is pretty easy to buy mostly local. We produce so much base foodstuffs that a general guideline will mostly work. Anything that’s grains, fruits, meats, and diary are probably Canadian, aside from tropical fruit at least. Nuts are hit or miss, but a lot of them come from California. Unfortunately a lot of rice is also from California. Oranges are almost all from Florida, so the first thing most people should do is cut oranges from their diets, preferably permanently and find a new favourite fruit like blueberries or apples.

The unfortunate truth though when it comes to groceries, is that it’s nearly impossible to give at least a little bit to the US with your purchases. Less than a half dozen companies own more than 80% of the products stocked at most grocery stores in Canada, all of which I believe are American. The maple leaf tag just means that there is a Canadian company in between the owners and the product.

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.