Illustration by emptyclouds
Just over a year ago, I walked into my local grocery megachain armed with a shopping list and a pledge to buy Canadian (or at the very least, dodge American).
Rarely does filling a shopping cart with dish detergent, paper towels and pantry staples get called an act of defiance. But in February, 2025, choosing a product designed, grown or manufactured in Canada (ideally some mix of all three) became a rallying cry across this country as the U.S. President unleashed his barrage of tariffs on Canadian meat, metals, trucks, kitchen cabinets, equipment, furniture and a rolling list of items that could change daily.
Avoiding U.S. goods proved harder than expected. Minutes were spent crouching next to icy refrigerators or creating bottlenecks in the condiments aisle as I squinted at labels or Googled the difference between “Product of Canada,” “Made in Canada” and the shifty “Prepared in Canada,” which can mean a product may have been processed or assembled in a Canadian facility with imported ingredients or components. It often meant spending more at checkout as well.
But in the months since, retailers promised to shore up domestic supply chains and politicians vowed investment to help Canadian businesses grow. So when I returned to the store last week with the same mission, I assumed buying Canadian would be a whole lot easier. I was wrong.
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Let’s be clear: My experiment was by no means an exact science. There are variables – season, day of the week, in-store promotions – I’ve made no effort to control.
What I did do was stick to a similar shopping list as last year, save for a few additions such as coffee and cereal, and a few cuts in the snack department (more so for fitness than finances).
The trip on a Monday afternoon started in the fruit and vegetable aisle where I picked up lemons (still from South Africa) and apples (still $5 a pound – a reassuring sign). This time, the crate of my go-to Honeycrisps was from Chile rather than Canada and about $1.50 more. That said, home-grown McIntosh and Ambrosia apples were widely available and about $2 cheaper.
Things took a turn in the spinach section where I headed to pick up a box of baby greens, ready to pay double for a 142-gram Canadian container as I had last year.
Before me was organic spinach, cooking spinach, bunches of spinach and arugula with spinach, all labelled with the words “Product of the USA.”
Then, just as I resigned to buying the affordable “Queen Victoria” spinach that made the trip from California ($0.88/100 grams), there it was: a massive 312g tub of President’s Choice baby spinach. The kind of canister you can only finish before it wilts if you’re feeding a family of four.
It was clear why I hadn’t noticed it at first. At $7 ($2.24/100 grams), it looked almost identical to PC’s U.S. option sitting directly above at $4 for a 142-g pack. The only difference: it was emblazoned with the words “Product of/du Canada” – “Product” in large, bold lettering and “of/du Canada” in thin, faded text. Same brand, same packaging.
Though the Canadian option was two and a half times as expensive as the conventional U.S. spinach, it was more than 25 per cent cheaper per gram than PC’s baby spinach from the U.S. ($2.82/100 g). The catch was, it only came in the larger, pricier size. While the last thing I needed was $7-worth of spinach, I obliged.
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The pasta aisle was, thankfully, uneventful. I picked up a box of PC Penne Rigate (product of Turkey), which hadn’t budged in price (about $2.50 for 454 grams), and was only 22 cents more than the ever-ambiguous No Name version. I also grabbed the only pack of Orzo available from Barilla for a one-pot Parmesan and Spinach pasta I was now committed to making to get the most out of my giant tub of spinach. (While Barilla manufactures some products in the U.S., my Orzo was made in Canada, a fact that was made apparent only in tiny scribbles on the side of the box – no maple leaf on its shelf sticker nor a “Prepared in Canada” label online.)
Coffee prices were up 18.8 per cent year over year in April, 2026, Statistics Canada data showed – a $3 spike on a $16-pack of grinds. But on my grocery trip, U.S.-manufactured alternatives were still cheaper. A tub of PC Medium Roast Regular Grind Coffee, prepared in Canada, went for $2.79/100g. Maxwell House’s coffee, meanwhile, was $2.31/100g.
The cheapest option was from No Name at $1.98/100 g, but while promising to be roasted in Canada, it did not bear a maple leaf on its shelf sticker or a “prepared in Canada” badge online.
What struck me most was not the difference in price, however, but how little grocery retailers or brands themselves were boasting about their Canadian origins. Gone were the bright red signs pointing toward Canadian products that appeared in the months after the Buy Canadian movement kicked off.
Yes, tiny maple leaves still hinted at Canadian ties on shelf stickers, but their use was inconsistent. My store, for example, promoted its prepared-in-Canada PC Oxi dishwashing liquid with a red maple leaf sticker, but no such badge was visible in store for Eco-Max detergent, made in Canada, just as it was missing for Barilla’s Orzo.
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My own awareness about what constituted a Canadian product made things a bit easier this time around. And there were countless new websites and apps to help.
Perhaps, after a year of getting help shopping Canadian, retailers and brands expected our training wheels to come off.
Grocers have suggested as much. Empire Co., which owns Sobeys, announced in March it was removing signage meant to highlight Canadian products.
“Canadians are, now more than ever, well informed in assessing country of origin when making their purchasing decisions based on package labelling,” said Luc L’Archevêque, Empire’s chief customer officer at the time.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why, after more than 12 months of a national outcry to eat, wear, even drive Canadian, did it not feel much easier to buy food made in Canada without juggling apps and online portals?
The numbers suggest that patriotic sentiment is going strong. A TD survey of 1,500 Canadian adults released last month showed nearly eight in 10 planned to support local or Canadian businesses this summer, with about half saying their desire to support local was stronger than last year.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis showed Canadian spending on U.S. goods and services fell last year by tens of billions of dollars.
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But on the ground, grocers are telling a different story. “We are seeing some customers who are going back to those products that they love, now that they are much cheaper,” Loblaw chief executive Per Bank said during an earnings call back in November. “That will have some effect on Canadian sales.”
(Loblaw spokesperson Rachel Siekanowicz later told The Globe the company has onboarded more than 200 new Canadian suppliers in the past year.)
Since the fall, the war in Iran has put even more pressure on fuel and food prices, and the national enthusiasm to buy Canadian seems to have run headlong into the reality of declining affordability. Without the ability to scale quickly, Canadian producers face fiercer competition against legacy American suppliers that can provide large volumes cheaply.
“Affordability is going to trump buying Canadian,” said Gary Sands, senior vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers.
Grocery prices spiked 4.3 per cent last month compared with the same time a year ago, the 16th straight month that year-over-year food inflation outpaced headline figures, Statistics Canada data showed.
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Fresh vegetables showed the biggest hike. The end to a 30-year trade deal between the U.S. and Mexico last July has stoked price volatility across the North American tomato trade and raised prices in Canada by 45.2 per cent over the year in May, for example.
“It’s one thing to want to buy Canadian, but you have to be able to get that product,” and get it relatively cheap, Mr. Sands said.
“Our issue is how to scale up production,” said David Ian Gray, a retail analyst and instructor at Capilano University. Five large grocery players, which control just under 80 per cent of the market, require massive volume.
While counter-tariffs on many U.S.-made consumer goods have been removed since the start of the trade war, industrial inputs still face high duties. Increased costs make it difficult for Canadian brands to open new factories or expand production while keeping consumer-facing prices down.
Bank of Canada data showed the proportion of food spending on Canadian groceries went up by 2 percentage points in March, 2025, relative to January that year. The proportion spent on U.S. products fell by about as much. This trend began to reverse by the end of summer, which also coincided with Canada taking down counter-tariffs that may have raised the cost of some U.S. food products.
Interprovincial trade barriers meanwhile continue to choke small- and medium-sized suppliers. Though pacts such as the Canadian Mutual Recognition Agreement on the Sale of Goods are pushing progress in dismantling some regulatory hurdles, it excluded food and beverages, among massive swaths of Canadian industry.
Governments are “saying the right thing,” but it hasn’t translated to tangible benefits for many businesses on the ground, said Ryan Mallough, vice-president at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
By the end of my trip, I couldn’t tally exactly how much more it cost to dodge American food, because I hadn’t avoided it entirely. I did my best to steer clear of U.S. products where it was practical. But I didn’t purchase the pricier Canadian coffee, or make efforts to understand the origins of my No Name beans, tomato pastes and pastas when the information wasn’t clear and the price was.
Without added help from retailers or brands, more Canadians torn between supporting their country and their savings will likely follow suit. Interest in buying Canadian is “always tempered by the reality of affordability,” Mr. Sands said.
