Pearl Milling is a Product of Canada. The others are Product of USA. I’ve been using Pearl since the first wave of tariffs (it’s just as good). I have returned to turning Product of USA products upside down.
If you’re able and have a little bit of time and some airtight containers, you can make weeks at a time of dry mix very easily.
Then when you want pancakes, add milk eggs and butter/oil to the mix. Barely different than using the box, just a couple more ingredients.
Flour? Easy to buy Canadian. Cheap Sugar? Easy to buy Canadian. Cheap Baking powder/baking soda, not immediately sure but cheap Salt? If not Canadian, very easily non American cheap Milk/eggs/butter? Easy to buy Canadian. You’re probably adding at least one of these to those boxes anyway.
And who profits? You.
Or if for whatever reason it has to be this way, you’re doing better than most just making sure it was made here honestly
You know what? I’m down with that! Thank you 😘
There’s really only one label I’d want on goods in Canadian stores: some variant of “American”. If the bulk of the money goes to the USA, it’s American and gets that label. None of this “Product of Canada” vs. “Made in Canada” vs. “100% Canadian” bullshit that is specifically designed to confuse consumers and have more money flow to the USA through maple-washing bullshit.
If it says “American” it means that the bulk of the money flows to the shitheads of the USA and funds the USA’s attacks on Canada. Don’t buy it. If there’s no such labels on products, here’s a thought: put it there yourself. Get some cheap red label paper and print something like “MONEY GOES TO USA! LABOUR EXPLOITED HERE” or something like that on it and start slapping it onto products in grocery stores. Target the American shit that’s placed deliberately at eye level by the stores. Don’t be fooled by “Made in/Product of/100%” labels. Research the actual companies and if it’s an American owner, slap the American label on it.
For reference, incidentally:
- Made in Canada requires 51% of the total direct costs to be Canadian. Unless it’s food, in which case the ingredients can come from anywhere, as long as the “final transformation” was in Canada. (Yes, this is indeed a major loophole. Why do you ask?)
- Product of Canada requires 98% of the total direct costs of production to be Canadian.
- 100% Canadian means everything is Canadian.
Note that not a single one of these says anything about where the profits flow, only where the labour was exploited. An American-owned company can claim a product to be 100% Canadian, even if the bulk of the gross receipts flow Down South. This is one of the maddening bits of the legislation that brought us this labelling: it’s 100% useless for using boycotts as an economic weapon because it doesn’t actually help figure out where the money is flowing, which is what boycotts are there to attack.
I’d do this in the US, but most of our shit isn’t even made here at this point.
The shit that is, isn’t regulated and probably no longer safe for human consumption
Hey! Not a lot of people have died of the diarrhea lettuce!
As others pointed out it is American, however some of it may be made in Canada. Its American but might still have canadian jobs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Milling_Company?wprov=sfla1
Then please educate me. If it says, “Product of Canada”, is it not necessarily a product of Canada??
Because Pepsi owns pearl milling company. Pepsi is American. So money goes there too. Its better yes because there are Canadians employed by the pearl milling company, but they does not mean it is canadian
I absolutely disagree.
If it’s “Canadian jobs” with an American company, it means the money flows to the USA but the labour being exploited is here in Canada.
Buy actual Canadian products, not maple-washed shit out of a misplaced sense of wanting Canadian labour to be exploited by American assholes.
misplaced sense of wanting Canadian labour to be exploited by American assholes.
I get what your are saying, but the amount of Canadians working at American owned businesses is astronomical. So its making sure they can also put a roof over their heads too
We do that by getting Canadian businesses to grow to the point they hire more, not by pouring all our money Down South for a bunch of rich fucks to promote sick fucks into a government that attacks Canada.
Obviously we can’t do this “cold turkey”, but people have to start thinking that way. How do we get out from under the USA’s thumb? By feeding the USA all our money!?
Yeah, can’t expect a 180 over night when it took decades or centuries to build the systems we have now. Making perfect the enemy of good is also not beneficial, so in the other guys favour, at least some of the proceeds make it to Canadians, which certainly is better than nothing.
But yes, overall we’d be better off having our own products that don’t need to syphon shareholder value to billionaires in the states, as a general rule the more foreign influence, the less sovereign.
Exactly this. We can’t change, as you said, overnight when decades were spent making things the way they are, but we can start looking at products and deliberately choose the Canadian way.
Ketchup, for example. Heinz is American, so people are going with French’s because of their “Ontario Tomatoes” stuff. But French’s is owned by the McCormick group. It’s not Canadian either. Dig deeper. Find another ketchup that is actually Canadian. Go with Sun-Brite Foods’ (Primo) ketchup line. (I think they’re 100% Canadian.) Go with FitCook. Go with small-batch brands like Mi Corazon or Nanny Hudson. Or, and here’s a real thought, just buy tomato paste from a Canadian company and make your own. It’s not hard, and if you talk with your neighbours, one person who likes cooking can cook up a massive batch for the whole neighbourhood to buy into.
There are options. You don’t have to be a slave to grocery store eye level marketing tricks and a feeling of helplessness.
I don’t know. Perhaps it was packaged here but made elsewhere.
No, I don’t think that’s it. There was a “packaged in Canada”, but another “Product of USA” on the same package.
You don’t have to actually guess what these labels mean, you know. A quick duckduckgo search nets official definitions and links to the relevant laws.
“Product of Canada” means that two conditions are met:
- the last substantial transformation of the good occurred in Canada
- all or virtually all (at least 98%) of the total direct costs of producing or manufacturing the good have been incurred in Canada.
I’m just learning this now. So Product of Canada means nothing??
Not necessarily. These labels refer to the manufacturing of the product only, it does not stipulate who owns the parent company that made it.
It means that 98% or more of the money that was spent making the thing (ingredients and labor) was spent in Canada.
This is still a good thing. Buying things that are “Made in Canada”(good), “Product of Canada” (better), or “100% Canadian” (best) ensures that the majority of the money comes into or stays in Canada (unless you’re working with something with profit margins over 100% which is quite rare). Anything that doesnt have one of these labels right now means that the majority of the money spent making it was spent somewhere else and the product shipped here.
The problem is almost everything is owned by the Americans.
No, it means canadian stuff was involved
More to the point, it means Canadian labour was exploited while Americans were fed the profits.
Yes, that is capitalism. I’d rather not see millions suddenly lose their jobs all at once though
Shift to Canadian companies and they expand and hire.
That is also capitalism.
