To show support for Canada amid a trade war with the U.S., John Mackay says he tries to only buy Canadian products during grocery runs.
That’s why the 81-year-old from Tillsonburg, Ont., said he’s complained to Metro multiple times after seeing orange juice with pulp by Irrésistible — a Metro-owned private-label brand — with a red maple leaf next to the price tag on the shelf.
“Since when are we growing oranges in Canada?” said Mackay, whose home is roughly 115 kilometres west of Hamilton. “I was pissed off.”
What customers see on the Metro website is a red circle with a maple leaf and the words “produit d’ici” — which translates to “product from here” — next to the word Canada, outside the circle. But the website doesn’t contain a clear definition of exactly what that means.
Shoppers like Mackay are expressing frustration from coast to coast, many writing into Marketplace, questioning what products get identified as Canadian and who’s actually benefiting by our largest grocery stores using these labels.
To find out how often grocery stores are labelling products with Canadian symbols, Marketplace analyzed products sold online at one Loblaws store, through Voilà in Toronto, and at Metro.
Marketplace found that a third of products at the Loblaws were labelled as Prepared in Canada, and more than a fifth of products at Voilà were labelled with a Shop Canada logo. There were also thousands of Metro products listed under that store’s Canada label.
- This story is the first in a series launched by CBC’s Marketplace to investigate consumer questions and concerns when it comes to how the trade war with the U.S. is impacting the Canadian marketplace. Contact [email protected] to submit any tips.
The products listed range from local maple syrup to not-so-local items, like pineapple juice.
Marketplace shared its findings with experts who say grocery stores are trying to capitalize on the country’s wave of patriotism, noting that a vague definition of what makes a product Canadian is in the best interest of retailers, not shoppers.
“There’s all kinds of opportunities to do marketing that are somewhat misleading,” said David Soberman, a marketing professor at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
Metro told Marketplace the “produit d’ici” logo was mistakenly added to items on its Ontario web pages and is being removed and will just display the word “Canada,” which means the product was produced, made or grown here. The company said it is continuously reviewing and updating how it identifies products.
Loblaws store labelled more than 1 in 3 items as Prepared in Canada
Marketplace found Loblaws labelled 35 per cent of all products online as Prepared in Canada.
Michael von Massow, a professor at the University of Guelph who studies the economy of food, said he would’ve expected an even higher number of products to fall under the Prepared in Canada label that Loblaws uses.
“It’s not a really rigorous standard to meet,” he said.
The CFIA website says Prepared in Canada can be used to describe a grocery item that has been entirely prepared in Canada. That means “handled, harvested, preserved, processed, tested, treated or slaughtered.”
“There’s an advantage to being broader … having a broader definition means you can label more things and make it easier for things to go in baskets,” said von Massow.
Von Massow says a bottle of orange juice, for example, could be described as Prepared in Canada because it could be bottled here or because, if it’s a juice with concentrate, a Canadian entity could have added water back into the mixture.
Unlike a Product of Canada, which means virtually all (98 per cent) of its major ingredients, processing and the labour used to make the food product must be Canadian, there is no similar threshold for items labelled as Prepared in Canada.
The three brands with the highest percentage of products tagged with the Prepared in Canada label included Schneiders, Liberté and Club House.
Soberman and von Massow both said consumers should also think about how rigid a standard they want to set for themselves. Von Massow said though it’s been a challenge, right now, he tries to only buy Product of Canada items.
“My wife tells me I can’t eat my favourite cereal anymore because it’s made in the U.S.A.,” he said.
The “Buy Canadian” movement is alive and well in the city. But it’s not just Canadians who are refusing to purchase American goods or visit the country. Movements in Europe have cropped up as well.
Soberman said customers trying to avoid companies with American ownership may find themselves with limited options, given many Canadian brands have owners south of the border or elsewhere in the world.
For example, Liberté and Club House have Canadian roots, but Liberté is owned by Sodiaal, a dairy co-operative in France, and Club House is owned by an American company, McCormick and Co.
Some brands with a high percentage of Prepared in Canada products at the Loblaws location — like Kraft — weren’t created in Canada, though the brand has emphasized its Canadian connections.
In an emailed statement, Loblaws said it follows the CFIA guidelines when labelling all products at its stores. The maple leaf symbol in stores means the item was Prepared in Canada. It didn’t say why it chose that specific label online, but noted some items in stores may also have a Made in Canada or Product of Canada label on the packaging and shelves.
“With thousands of products changing all the time, we do our best to keep everything accurate, but sometimes mistakes happen,” read the email from Loblaws.
Voilà labelled more than 1 in 5 items as Shop Canada
At Voilà, an online-ordering platform owned by Empire Company Ltd., the parent company of Sobeys, 22 per cent of items are tagged with a Shop Canada label.
The Voilà website states items in that category are “made in Canada from domestic and imported ingredients.”
When it comes to food, the term Made in Canada means the last substantial transformation of the product occurred in Canada, even if the ingredients aren’t from Canada, according to the CFIA website.
If the Made in Canada label is used, it must also include whether the product is made with imported ingredients.
That, and the fact that the last “substantial transformation” needs to happen in Canada, are what set this label apart from the Prepared in Canada moniker.
And unlike non-food items labelled Made in Canada, which require at least 51 per cent of the product to be made here, the CFIA website doesn’t indicate such a threshold for edible products.
Marketplace also found labelling on Voilà has not stayed consistent.
On March 17, nearly 35 per cent of products listed on Voilà were tagged with the Shop Canada label, but as of March 24, it was down to roughly 22 per cent.
In an email, Sobeys said its Shop Canada label is there to meet customers’ requests. The company adds its labels to products manually, it said, and occasionally makes mistakes, but tries to fix them immediately. The Shop Canada items include those that are 100 per cent Canadian, Products of Canada or Made in Canada, it said.
“Over the past year, approximately 12 per cent of sales have come from products sourced in the U.S., and given our work to find alternatives to U.S. sources, we expect this number to decrease,” Sobeys said.
Mackay said when he’s shopping now, he’s double-checking all the labels.
Von Massow said he’d like to see consistency between the standard grocery stores are using to identify Canadian products.
Grocery stores are not the only ones under scrutiny. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) also told the broader food industry in mid-March that it has seen a rise in complaints about claims on food labels and advertisements, saying labels must be clear and honest.
“This is a reminder that making false or misleading claims about a food’s origin is against Canada’s food laws and can damage consumer confidence,” the agency said on March 14.
In an email, the CFIA told Marketplace it has received 60 complaints about origin claims on food labels and advertisements since November — with 54 of those coming in February and mid-March. It said of the 19 followups the agency has done, six were non-compliant.
The CFIA reiterated that retailers must ensure signs and advertisements are not misleading, saying it takes labelling issues seriously.
Tips for shoppers
Soberman and von Massow say shoppers should not assume a maple leaf or Canadian flag next to products means the product is fully Canadian.
Both experts also said shoppers should decide what they want to accomplish.
“People need to decide whether it’s buy Canadian — or not to buy American,” said von Massow.
If you do want to buy Canadian products, he noted, you should consider the standard you want to stick to. For example, shopping for Product of Canada items will likely leave you pretty restricted, whereas Made in Canada or Prepared in Canada offers more flexibility.
There are, however, some apps that can help you. The CFIA also said it has a reference guide and video to help shoppers.
