Trying to buy Canadian? Shoppers in Kamloops, Okanagan find it isn't easy
A trade war with President Donald Trump has Canadian shoppers trying to source locally made grocery products, but understanding product labels at major grocery outlets is complicated and some major grocery outlets are not forthcoming with information.
“Generally, retailers are still not marketing clearly where the goods are coming from, especially produce,” Fred Nelson of Vernon told iNFOnews.ca in a recent interview. Nelson manages a Facebook group dedicated to sourcing Canadian made products that has almost 10,000 members navigating the confusion together.
“Something may be labelled a Product of Canada, but the materials inside it were sourced from the U.S. so we have to take that into consideration," he said.
Group members are buying from Canadian-owned retailers like Save-On-Foods and Canadian Superstore as much as possible.
At the beginning of March, iNFOnews.ca reached out to three major Canadian grocery companies to ask how they are helping shoppers identify Canadian-made products, whether they are identifying Canadian products with American sourced ingredients in them and if they are getting more requests for Canadian made goods.
None of them provided a phone interview as requested by iNFOnews.ca.
Canadian Superstore didn’t respond at all.
Save-On-Foods asked to be sent the questions so they could provide a statement. That statement never arrived.
FreshCo, a subsidiary of Sobeys, answered a few, but not all the questions in an emailed statement.
“We are fully supporting the ‘Buy Canada’ movement and are focused on protecting our customers as much as possible from the impacts of the current tariff dispute,” the statement said. The company added it has a clear and robust strategy that favours local products in their stores.
“We have amplified this very successful local program while also continuing to accelerate the sourcing of Canadian products as alternatives to products on Canada’s counter-tariff list. And we’ve doubled down on our efforts to make sure local and Canadian options are front and centre, labelled and easy to spot in all our 1,600 stores," the statement said.
Sobeys said it is committed to providing customers with choice and encouraging informed purchasing decisions by putting information on displays and putting the country-of-origin on packaging and labels.
How the products are labelled and whether the company is getting more requests for Canadian goods from customers wasn’t answered, nor was a request for data showing any recent purchasing trends for American products.
Another question that wasn’t answered was which American grocery store products can be sourced from Canadian companies instead.
Major grocery store outlets sell both American and Canadian goods and sourcing domestic products is complicated whether they are labelled or not.
For example, Kirkland Signature products are a popular brand in Costco Canada locations, but it isn’t a Canadian brand, it’s the private label brand of Costco Wholesale that is headquartered in Washington state, according to an article by money.ca.
Some of Kirkland’s products — like certain dairy products, maple syrup and meats — are sourced from Canadian suppliers. There's a range of American and Canadian-made goods at Costco, but shoppers wanting to support Canada, need to know which ones are which.
A Product of Canada label indicates at least 98% of the direct cost of producing or manufacturing the good has been incurred in Canada, according to the Competition Bureau of Canada.
A Made in Canada label means at least 51% of the total direct cost of producing or manufacturing the item was incurred in Canada, and can have additional qualifiers included such as “Made in Canada with domestic and imported parts.”
Both labels indicate the last substantial transformation of the goods occurred in Canada.
If the product doesn’t meet either criteria, the Bureau recommends the use of specific labelling that reflects the limited Canadian production or manufacturing involved.
For shoppers in Kamloops and the Okanagan trying to source locally, Nelson said his members are having success sourcing locally grown produce at smaller, more independent-type grocery stores, such as Swan Lake Fruit Stand in Vernon, Askews in Armstrong and NuLeaf in Kamloops.
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