Why identifying and labelling Canadian-made products is so difficult

All the talk surrounding U.S. tariffs has made consumers question what they’re putting in their shopping carts.

And, in particular, how challenging it is to identify Canadian-made products.

“It’s tough,” Mike von Massow, a professor and food economist at the University of Guelph, told CTV News. “It depends where they want to draw the line.”

He said our labour force and supply chains are so integrated it isn’t easy labeling a product as fully Canadian or American.

“PepsiCo is a large American company, one of the biggest food companies in the world. They own FritoLay, which produces Lay’s potato chips. So, they’re on the list of ‘don’t buy,’” von Massow said. “But what a lot of people don’t realize is those potato chips in the Lay’s bag are produced in Cambridge, Ontario with Ontario potatoes – with Ontario labour.”

The FritoLay plant, at 1001 Bishop St. North, employees over 600 people.

Some of the bags produced in Ontario can be identified by the “Made in Canada” label on the front.

Other grocery products, however, aren’t labelled at all.

Which is why MadeinCA.ca has become very popular, according to the website’s owner Dylan Lobo.

“We had around 10,000 average monthly visitors a month ago,” he told CTV News. “This month, like [Feb. 2] alone, it was 150,000 people on the website.”

Lobo calls it his personal passion project that he does in addition to his full-time job. He launched it a few years back when U.S. President Donald Trump initially put tariffs on trade items like Canadian steel and lumber.

Lobo puts products into two categories: “Made in Canada by Canadian Companies” or “Made in Canada from Companies in Other Countries.” He said it requires a lot of research, especially lately, due to a huge influx of submissions.

“Finding if a product is made in Canada is really hard because a lot of businesses, they don’t really make it clear if it’s Canadian-owned.”

Lobo said he also tries to eye on businesses in the case they change ownership or move locations.

von Massow, meantime, said he recently spoke with an unnamed salsa manufacturer.

“They produce in Ontario with Ontario tomatoes, onions and peppers,” he explained. “But, in the winter when we’re not producing tomatoes, they may bring product in.”

Even if product mentions Canada, it doesn’t mean it’s 100 per cent Canadian, von Massow warned, using as an example a bag of frozen vegetables he spotted over the weekend.

“It said, ‘Canada A’ on the front but, on the back of the package, I couldn’t see ‘Product of Canada’ anywhere. It might be that some of those vegetables are not actually produced in Canada, but that they meet the ‘Canada A’ grade,” he said, referring to the grading system used by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. “It’s easy to be fooled.”

Some products may also cross the border multiple times, making labelling even more difficult.

“We have products, like pigs that are produced in Canada and then harvested in the U.S.,” von Massow said. “Are those Canadian? Is that Canadian pork, or not?”

Each consumer, he added, needs to decide where they want to draw the line when it comes to shopping Canadian. If it’s serious concern, von Massow suggests contacting the company directly.