Fighting back with a boycott!
Dodi Newman
My family decided to join others in boycotting the American economy once we heard President Trump’s outrageous threat to make Canada the 51st US state.
As a first step, we cancelled our annual winter vacation in Florida, though it broke our hearts. The palm trees, the warm and sunny weather, and being just a few steps away from the ocean—we’ll miss it all sorely.
The second step was to boycott U.S. products, and before I go further, I want to acknowledge that such a boycott is not for everyone. For many, in fact, it is an unaffordable luxury. If it is successful, it will make prices rise; it may also cost Canadian jobs. Secondly, it may not be possible to boycott all American products. Think produce and the e-world internet-based companies.
For us, boycotting big-dollar American products was easy—we don’t need any. And even if we did, there is a non-U.S. substitute for virtually everything on that list. So we’ll be boycotting U.S. e-world companies and food and drink produced by U.S. companies wherever we can. It’s going to be hard to give up Amazon, bourbon and those wonderful California wines. But other countries make good wines, Canada among them, and we can live without bourbon. We’ll make an exception for Pepsi, which is like mother’s milk to my husband.
Buying Canadian can get tricky. You’ll need to do some research. For example, Loblaws lists Queen Victoria bagged spinach as one of its “Prepared in Canada” products. With a name like that you’d think it was Canadian, right? Wrong. Queen Victoria Farms, the home of Queen Victoria spinach, is located in Sausalito, CA, U.S.A. “Prepared in Canada,” according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, is used “to describe a food which has been entirely prepared in Canada.” This does not mean that the ingredients are Canadian. If they were, it would be listed as “Product of Canada.”
Boycotting produce: We can do as our forebears did and eat what’s in season. Forget California asparagus, wait for the stuff grown in Ontario or Québec—much fresher and tastier. The best peaches come from the Niagara Peninsula, and my family will happily do without until Ontario Red Haven peaches hit the markets. Ditto for plums, apricots and pears. Canadian apples are available year-round. Or we can import food. My family tries not to buy imported produce for ecological reasons. Still, most Canadians will have to buy some imported vegetables and fruits, be it for financial reasons, our sometimes arctic temperatures, or because, like citrus fruit, they just don’t grow in Canada.
Then there’s protein. Not a problem—Canada excels in dairy, meat and fish production. Think Lethbridge pork, BC salmon, Alberta beef, and the very local St. Albert cheese.
So far, so good. But some of the toughest buying decisions we face are whether or not to abandon key parts of the e-world: shopping sites like Amazon and eBay, search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing, social media like Facebook and X, and streaming services like Apple (along with their classy computers, iPhones and Apple watches) and Netflix. They are all American companies (even if some have Canadian daughters), and it’s hard to imagine life without them, isn’t it?
Boycotting American products won’t be easy, but let’s try to do the best we can for as long as the Trump regime reigns and rages in the USA.
How Canadian is it?
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has a website to help us decipher country of origin labels. If you wish to make informed choices in the grocery store, I highly recommend you go have a look (https://inspection.canada.ca/en/food-labels/labelling/industry/origin-claims). Here are some highlights:
Product of Canada: A food product may use the claim “Product of Canada” when all major ingredients, processing, and labour used to make the food product are Canadian.
Made in Canada can be used with a qualifying statement on a food product when the last substantial transformation of the product occurred in Canada. Examples: “Made in Canada from domestic and imported ingredients” or “Made in Canada from imported ingredients.” Sometimes countries of origin are named, sometimes not.
Prepared in Canada statements are used to describe a food which has been entirely prepared or processed and packaged in Canada with material from other countries without a qualifying statement on imported ingredients. Examples: “Roasted and blended in Canada” to describe coffee. “Canned in Canada” can be used to describe imported green beans that were canned in Canada. Again, sometimes countries of origin of main ingredients are named, sometimes not.
