A shopper reaches for groceries at a grocery store in Toronto, on May 30, 2024.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.
It was in the produce section of a Toronto non-chain supermarket that I started to wonder if I had, in fact, lost my mind.
I was reaching into a garlic bin in search of intact bulbs, as one does. Then I saw the Canadian flags everywhere – overhead, above the aisles, but also on certain products – and then looked at the sign for this garlic. Not only was it not Canadian (normal for March) but it was – as I was – born in the U.S.A. My common ground with this garlic ended there. I have lived in Canada for a decade and became a Canadian citizen. I don’t want to be annexed, even by the country of which I also remain a citizen, and I really don’t want to have been annexed owing to my own consumer carelessness.
So I transcended my pre-2025 impulse to select the American item for reasons of quality and proximity, and chose the Spanish garlic. But things were grim on the leafy-greens front (see: March). Guilt-ridden but keen to eat a vegetable, I put American kale into my cart. Of all the ways to betray one’s new country, I had to go with a once-trendy brassica.
No Canadian can discern what Donald Trump has planned for Canada. I’m not sure Mr. Trump himself knows the answer. Does his repeated assertion that Canada will become the 51st state foreshadow a missile headed for the Fiesta Farms produce section (she says, not at all anxiously) or is it a negotiation tactic? What is going on?
There’s a time-honoured way of asserting control at such moments: going shopping.
The shop-for-Canada movement quickly went from pragmatic tariff anticipation to a red-and-white makeover of commerce. If trade war spells recession, it’s hard to fault businesses for seeking to avoid the fate of Hudson’s Bay. And Canadian consumers are acting sensibly – and out of well-earned indignation – in trying to lessen their reliance on the U.S.
When I first saw the patriotic shop signage, I felt moved. This was tempered once I started to suspect … Canada-washing. Stores in my Toronto neighbourhood have buy-Canadian-here signage, where small print indicates that they sell some Canadian products. There have been egregious examples, like American products tagged with a maple leaf, but the bigger issue may be that every store with a presence in Canada can legitimately claim to be contributing to the Canadian economy. Even Tesla dealerships.
If you want to buy Canadian, you have to think critically and then some. If there’s an obvious answer to the impact of purchasing a Clinique lipstick (American company, apparently, but made in Belgium) at a Canadian pharmacy chain, it is one that eludes me, the lipstick’s owner. Someone could answer this question, and I’m sure they will, but it would not clear up countless others. A hyperfocus on individual consumer choices can encourage a navel-gazing approach, like my vegetable-aisle hand-wringing, in place of something systemic.
Unless there’s a directive from on high, as with the LCBO, many Canadian stores sell U.S. goods to stay afloat. U.S.-based companies in Canada, selling Canadian-made goods, are similarly tricky, as a Reddit user who proudly posted their U.S.-boycotting Costco Canada haul doubtless learned from the comments.
There is the further awkwardness for U.S.-Canadian dual citizens. I have voted against Mr. Trump in three elections and choose to live in Canada, but I’m American, thus complicit. Should I boycott myself?
It’s not clear how much the aim is to buy Canadian versus not buying American. Why would a trade war with the States necessitate switching from Italian pasta to Canadian? I ask not just out of fondness for De Cecco, but also to make sense of how much of ‘Buy Canadian’ is anti-globalization. I’m on board with Canada standing up to the U.S., but not with Canada closing itself off to the world.
There’s a xenophobic tinge to some of the messaging, and no, I am not claiming it’s bigoted to boycott Donald Trump’s America. I mean the signs indicating a “Canadian-owned” shop. The idea of ”Buy Canadian“ is surely to avoid American conglomerates, not to avoid small businesses whose owners are Canadian permanent residents, perhaps on the path to citizenship? However noble the intent, words have meaning.
You think you’re musing about shopping, but the next thing you know, you’re pondering the multifaceted nature of nationalism. The way the same flag can be raised to indicate a commitment to sovereignty or an exclusionary populism. Or, as is now the case, a desperate plea: Buy my wares before the apocalypse strikes.