The Decibel - The trouble with enforcing Canadian food labels

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Amid threats of annexation and U.S.-imposed tariffs, Canadians are using their dollars to purchase Canadian goods. However, consumer complaints about products mislabelled as Canadian have spiked since the Buy Canadian movement began. Some in the food and beverage industry say cracking down too hard on mistaken labelling could backfire, dissuading retailers from promoting Canadian foods. Susan Krashinsky Robertson and Kate Helmore, both journalists for The Globe’s Report on Business, join The Decibel to discuss Canadian food labelling, the benefits of the Buy Canadian movement for farmers and producers, and how retailers can leverage patriotic shoppers to rebuild trust with them. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Maple washing. That's when a product is presented as Canadian, but isn't. The reality is there are very specific rules around what can be called a capital P product of Canada or made in Canada. And these labels have become important to many people trying to be patriotic shoppers at the grocery store. The big push to buy Canadian gained a lot of traction after the U.S. started its trade war with Canada last year. Recently, some Canadian companies have been fined for incorrectly labeling food as Canadian. So when foods have been maple washed, it can leave people wondering, can I trust my money is actually helping Canadian companies? Today we're talking to Susan Khrinsky Robertson and Kate Helmore.

Susan covers retailing in Canada, including the big grocers. And Kate reports on Canada's agricultural sector. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the day. the Globe and Mail. Susan, Kate, thanks so much for being here today. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Susan, let's start with you. How are Canadian foods labeled? Yeah, so there are strict rules for what can be called Canadian on product labels. For food, the rules are very specific. So a product of Canada has to contain at least 98% Canadian content, Whereas a product can be called made in Canada if it's undergone what's called a substantial transformation in this country, clear as mud, great.

What does that mean? The best way to think about it is think about a lemon loaf. Okay. So if you've got a lemon loaf and 98% of its ingredients are Canadian, the flour, the eggs, the butter, the lemons, probably not the lemons. We don't grow a lot of lemons in Canada. But just for sake of argument, then that would be called a product of Canada. because you've got 98% Canadian ingredients. But if you have a lemon loaf that doesn't have that many ingredients but is baked here

by Canadian workers in a Canadian facility, those ingredients have undergone a transformation. And so you could at that point probably call that lemon loaf made in Canada. Okay, that makes sense. So it's like substantial transformation is basically a fancy way of saying it's made, right? Like it's baked here and that then therefore made in Canada. Yeah, or processed or somehow gone through. through some sort of change essentially here. Okay. Kate, who gets to decide whether food reaches one of these thresholds?

It is the food processes, those who do the packaging, for example, who decide to put the label on the tin that says, made in Canada or part of Canada. And overseeing an enforcement of these food labels comes under the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which is a federal department. Okay. What about a Canadian flag or a Maple Leaf? because I see that sometimes on labels in the grocery store. Are there rules around how a food producer can use these symbols? Yeah, it's a good question.

I mean, there's two regulated terms that we've talked about, but then there's grey zone after grey zone after that, right? So if you put like a little maple leaf on something, is that the same as same project had it? No, right? But it is important to recognize that the CFIA does understand this concept of misleading advertising. So we all know the line that is crossed when you're like that is being advertised as Canadian. There's signs pointing to it.

It's on a Canadian part of the shelf. They would still say that, look, you're breaking some rules if that's not Canadian right there. There's a lot of the grey zone and it's understandable why it's so confusing for consumers. Why do these labels matter? Or I guess another way to put it is, why does it matter if something is mislabeled? Well, it's important because consumers are. trying to make decisions with their money and to support domestic producers. That's been the case ever since last year.

It really, really spiked around early 2025 when we had U.S. President Donald Trump, of course, threatening to annex Canada and also threatening substantial tariffs on goods coming from Canada among other countries, a threat he later made good on, of course. And around that time, there was this surge, as everyone remembers, in bi-Canadian sentiment. And so people went to the stores and we're looking to spend their money in a way that supported domestic workers and domestic producers. And they don't want to feel duped when they're making those decisions, right? So we've all had that experience, I think, or at least many of us have, being in a store and seeing something with a maple leaf on it, only to sort of take it home and take a closer look and find out, well, actually, it looks like this was largely imported. It can be very disorienting and it can also just feel dishonest.

And that's an important problem because the retailers really rushed to respond to this Buy Canadian sentiment. You know, they all rushed out to put signs up in their stores, to point to Canadian goods, in some cases, creating entire displays of Canadian products to sort of attract people in and make them spend their money where they were trying to spend their money. And in some cases, people would even pay a premium for those products because they believe they were supporting Canada. So it's really important when people are making those decisions that they're making it based on good information.

Yeah. So what you're saying is it can kind of burn trust with consumers. Yes. And for the retailers, you know, there was also a lot of value in this because we all recall those years of really rampant food inflation. We're still living with the effects of that spike, even though food inflation itself has come down to a slightly more normal level. The retailers took a big hit over that issue in terms of, public trust in terms of public sentiment, fair or not, that's another discussion. But the retailers themselves, I think, saw this as an opportunity to not only genuinely support Canadian industry,

something I think they all want to do, but also to win back a little bit of goodwill with their consumers by appearing to help them make those decisions. And so this was an important push for the retailers as well. Yeah. So Kate, as Susan mentioned, the buy Canadian movement was very big starting last year, of course, because of the terrorists, because of Trump calling it the 51st state. People were really kind of pushed to want to buy Canadian products. I'm wondering how that has impacted Canadian farmers and food producers. It's a really good question. It was good for the industry. Just to give a little bit of context, okay, so we've got Canadian agriculture. And we were thinking about Canadian agriculture.

They think about farmers and fields. But it's really important to think about Canadian food manufacturing. And actually, that is the country's largest source of manufacturing income. which is really interesting. And what we saw with this by Canadian movement is it was really good for those processes, who have struggled to stay competitive in lots of different areas. The challenge if you're moving into Canadian food manufacturing is your population really isn't that big and it's super spread out. So often what a lot of companies would do is they will move to the US where they have larger

population centers or they'll just lose their edge to producers in the US. They can just scale faster, quicker because they have that demand, because it's the Americans, and they don't get on retailer shelves. And suddenly, when Canadians are saying, we want to buy Canadian, retailers are not only scrambling to advertise more Canadian things, they're trying to find more Canadian products. So for this story, I spoke to a Ontario-based chili and soup manufacturer, and they launched their own brand about six years ago,

and they were like, it was really slow. It was really hard to get into the big, retailers. And then a year ago, it just, it was a boom. Like, because they had loblers and sobies, just knocking at their door being like, we can't find anyone else who still makes soup in Canada. Campbell's is consolidated in the US, right? So can you please give us as much as you can? They invested more than half a million dollars in, like, expanding their processing plant. It was really, really big for them. And then that trickles down, right? Because not only do you have these manufacturers, is saying, oh, we can make more.

They're saying, how do we source more? How do we buy more Canadian ingredients? How do we find more suppliers, which is good for the farmer? It gets all the way back to that. It protects them from the disruptive global commodity markets and the trade crises that we've seen over the last year. If you can onshore more domestic demand, it trickles throughout the whole system.

And it helps, what is it kind of an unsung manufacturing sector, to be honest? But don't mistake me. That doesn't mean that we're totally food secure. we actually import a lot of fruit and vegetables, which is an essential part of our diet. And we need to build up that sector. We can now grow those items year round in greenhouses. And we've seen a boom in greenhouse investment across Ontario, Alberta, Quebec. But to actually meet Canadian demand, that would need to climb five times.

And that requires investment. And for investment to move into the space, they need more signals from consumers that they will buy Canadian. So of course the Bicadian movement was quite strong about a year ago. But Susan, I'm curious to know if this is still a priority for shoppers. It is still a priority for shoppers. It has waned a bit. And there are some caveats to that. So the Bank of Canada actually recently did some research on this.

They've been tracking people's self-reported buying behaviors and asking, you know, are you spending more or less on Canadian goods, on U.S. goods? And a majority of Canadians are still reporting as of the end of, last year that they are spending more on Canadian goods. So more than 50% of people in a survey said that. And then an equal number, almost equal number, are saying that they're spending less, consciously spending less, on U.S. goods. Now, when we look at the numbers, that number of people who report both of those behaviors has come down a little bit from sort of early last year when this sentiment was really at its height. But the fact that it's still a majority shows you that

there is some staying power to this movement. That being said, when you talk to people in the industry, they do say that they see a very real limitation on this sentiment. So people may want to support Canadian producers, but those stresses on people's budgets that we talked about earlier play a real role. When I spoke with the head of the Retail Council of Canada, she told me that they think there's about a 10 to 15 percent delta of where people will spend a little bit more more for a Canadian good. And beyond about 10 or 15% of a premium on price, they're just not willing to do it for obvious reasons, right?

We're all struggling, I think, to manage our budgets in a world where food is just a lot more expensive than it used to be. I think it's good to note as well here, though, that even if the Bicanda movement just ended, this company that I was speaking to the chili and bean soup guys were saying we would still benefit because there's something about consumer preferences when it comes to food items and they're very sticky. So if you as a household have always brought Campbell's tomato soup, it's really hard to convince a consumer to shift, especially if the other product is more expensive. This by Canada movement came in and it was a disruptive force. And suddenly

people, for the reasons that we've listed, were willing to try new things. And maybe they spent the extra dollar on the Canadian soup and went, actually, this is better. We like this one better. Moving forward, I will order this regardless of what's going on with the world. Obviously, that preference changes when food inflation gets to certain levels. But this company was telling me, yes, their growth would slow down. But now they've got the shelf space and now they've got the recognition with the consumers. They can still see themselves getting that growth just slower. It was a good breakthrough moment for them, if you imagine it that way.

Right. Kay, you talked about this a little bit earlier. But when this started a year ago, did grocers have enough Canadian products to meet this demand? or did they have to go and find Canadian companies to feature in their stores? Yeah, my impression was that they really did have to go out there and find more Canadian companies. Susan can speak to this, but it can be quite tricky for Canada's food manufacturers, especially the ones on the mid to smaller size, are to get shelf space because of kind of the way that the system works. Yeah, okay, I actually don't really understand how shelf space works in grocery stores.

So, Susan, can you help me understand it a little bit? Like, how do products end up on shelves in a grocery store? Yeah, where you see products on the shelf in the grocery store is not chance. It's not just where that stocking person decided to put that soup can that day. Suppliers pay for that real estate. It's part of how grocers make their money. They charge their product suppliers for more prominent shelf space, things that are at more advantageous eye levels, for example. And those are fees that are part of the grocer's revenues.

And so that shelf space doesn't just get reallocated for no reason. But what we did see the grocers do is say, rather than necessarily moving things around on the shelf or in the aisles, you know, those end cap displays I talked about earlier, those sort of end of aisle product displays you sometimes see on like a theme or on a brand. Some of them were creating end caps around Canadian products or putting markers on their shelf labels themselves, the labels on the products to have. help draw the eye towards Canadian items or even signage pointing people towards Canadian items. It was all sort of part of how the grocers were responding to this movement and to these wider political pressures. Yeah. And I can also imagine if you're a small Canadian company that it might be difficult to get shelf space over an American company, say. Well, yeah. I mean, there's limited real estate, right? And that's why, you know, they can charge for it. That's also why there's not infinite space to put a million different brands. But,

many of the grocers do have programs to support Canadian producers and small producers to help them get some space in some of their stores. And producers will tell you very different reports on how effective those programs are. But long story short, yes, it is a push and pull of those big brands that people want to see in the stores and making room for these smaller domestic brands that maybe deserve a shot. We'll be right back. So last week, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced it had handed out fines for mislabeled Canadian food products. Who was involved in that and why? The announcement came with five different companies. It included two Lobloor-owned stores, a couple of wholesalers, one we believe might be a processor.

And the fines were around $10,000. Some of them were $7,000, $10,000. And, you know, the descriptions for what the fines were for was, you know, deceptive. labeling and advertising on products like blueberries or broccoli slaw or a banana bread is one of them. So yeah, the idea was basically that a consumer probably complained. They looked into that complaint and what they saw was that, yes, it wasn't true. And this company actually had falsely advertised this product. Interesting.

So, Susan, can you help me understand how the grocery stores are involved here? Because I think I understand the products and the labels on an actual product. But how do groceries get involved in the labeling of food as Canadian? So the CFIA said that these penalties were handed down for deceptive labeling or advertising. And it's the advertising where the retailers would come in. And in addition to the fines that have already been handed down, which the CFIA announced, they also acknowledged that they are currently investigating the head office of the grocer Sobe's for possible violations.

We don't know yet what the outcome of that investigation is or whether there's been wrongdoing. And Sobe's declined to comment on that. Have the other grocers who were refined said anything about what happened? Yeah, so Lobla spokesperson responded to us about this, acknowledging the CFIA's findings and adding that the company is sorry for any error and any confusion that it may have caused. La Blah also said that they are working to take measures at their stores, unspecified measures, but something to basically prevent issues with this kind of labeling or advertising in the future. and they said that they're committed to meeting their regulatory requirements. It's also worth noting when I spoke to the Retail Council of Canada President, she mentioned that, you know, keeping track of supply chains across thousands of items in a grocery store is actually not trivial.

And so in some cases, these errors may well be inadvertent. This may not be a grocer attempting to deceive a customer. This may just be that they were under the impression that something, met that threshold for either being made in Canada or product of Canada and they were simply mistaken. And she said to me that retailers really understand the trust associated with making these claims and they are working toward making sure that what they're saying is accurate. But she said essentially these incidents of mislabeling or misadvertising, at least in her view or as far as she knows, are essentially isolated and it's not a rampant issue. That's her

point of view. Okay, so it sounds like it could well be an honest mistake. So Kate mentioned it was shoppers who reported the mislabeling. How often does this happen? Yeah, for everything I just said about industry voices saying that this is not rampant, consumers certainly have the impression that it is. So in the first three months of 2025, the CFIA actually saw a more than eightfold spike in complaints about false origin labeling. And they identified 75 instances based on consumer complaints. of non-compliance last year. And then that resulted in these five fines that we talked about here. So this is something that consumers have been reporting far more than they used to.

I think I'm kind of surprised to learn that it's the consumers here that are kind of the ones who are, you know, holding these companies to account. Is that surprising? I mean, yes, on one hand, surprising. But if you zoom out and think about the CFIA, the CFIA has a lot of responsibilities. So the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is responsible for making sure that the plants that process your meat are doing so safely. And so the question does need to be, yes, in an ideal world, if there was unlimited resources to see if I would be doing its own continual investigations, it wouldn't need consumer complaints to follow up on. But that's not that world. And their resources are limited.

And would you, the listener, prefer them put their energy towards food safety or food labeling? I think that's a pretty obvious answer, right? So from what you're saying, though, there are really good reasons to make sure this labeling system does work. Consumers want it, food producers, and even grocers benefit from it. So what can be done to improve this labeling system to stop what we call maple washing? We can start with a retailer, what the retailer can do. So let's just take an example.

You've got a store that needs to bring in 8,000 flats of strawberries. to satiate consumer demand that week. They source 6,000 of them from Ontario greenhouses. And then under that sale, they're like, well, we can't source the next. We need to get the other 2,000 from Mexico or the US or whatever because we don't have enough Canadian supply. They might put that under the same kind of sale ticket item. So that whole system needs to be kind of rethought and rejigged so that you can really think

about not just the same sale, but also that if that under that sale, under that buy, comes products from different countries, then that is represented in an entire data collection system. And then you can zoom out and say, okay, what does the people who also benefit from this want? What do the people who make the food want? And actually I spoke to Food and Beverage Canada, which is the industry association representing a lot of processes across the country. And they maybe counterintuitively actually want lower standards. Oh, same more. So if we're looking at 98% for a product of Canada. They're saying, why not 85%?

Because 98% is a really high bar. Let's just take that lemon loaf idea that we have. So you make the lemon loaf and you sauce all the butter, the eggs, the wheat, the flour, whatever goes into lemon loaf from Canada. But then it's a lemon loaf. So you actually need 5% lemons because it's a big ingredient. We don't grow citrus in Canada for the most part. So you import that citrus. But that loaf is still made in Canada.

It still uses overwhelmingly Canadian products. It still employs Canadians in the plants that make it. So why are we holding it to such a high bar in that case? It actually could in some ways disincentivize because if a producer can't get the premium label of Product of Canada, then they know, oh, what the hell? Who cares? So a lower bar actually might incentivize it more. And it would also make it a little bit easier.

as far as, like, verifying the labeling. So what's the question here? If we hold it to such an extreme level, it makes it really hard to get to, but we don't necessarily see the gains. And the most important thing that consumers want is more food to be made in Canada. We want to build up this domestic processing

and manufacturing sector, so we have more food security, right? That's the idea. And what's the best, most efficient straight route to get there? And the industry association is saying, actually slightly lower levels would be better for us. Interesting, counterintuitive, but that's a very interesting take there.

Some of the companies that got fines had to pay $10,000. Is that enough to deter others from mislabeling a product as Canadian? That doesn't sound like very much. Yeah, I mean, it's $10,000 for a company the size of loblaws. I spoke to a regulations, a food regulatory lawyer who basically compared that to like a 10 cent speeding ticket. But it's not a lot about money, right? So Susan mentioned earlier that this is about public trust. And the trust that the public has in these retailers right now is low, really low.

And they wanted to take this by Canada movement as an opportunity to rebuild that trust. And these kinds of stories don't help them. Yeah, there is a halo effect, I think, for the retailers, if they do this right, in helping people make smart purchasing decisions based on reliable information. So it's not just about does a $10,000 fine mean anything to La Blah. Obviously, $10,000 doesn't mean anything to La Blah. They had retail sales of almost $64 billion last year. So that's not really the point.

But the point is if there are enough of these headlines, enough of this sense among consumers that they are being duped, then that's going to hurt this effort. And there's a reason retailers jumped on this as assiduously as they did. yes, some of it is pure wishes to do the right thing, for sure, but they are also businesses. And they saw an opportunity here, a PR opportunity. And that PR opportunity, they don't want to see that squandered. So if consumers are overwhelmingly feeling as though they're walking into that store and being deceived, well, then the advantage of labeling things as Canadian is essentially wiped away. Whereas if they feel like they're walking in there with a desire to do something good with their money,

a desire to make the kinds of economic decisions that even in a very small way hit back against these threats to our very sovereignty. Well, then that's an opportunity for those businesses to make people feel as though they're part of decisions that they feel good about. And for any retail business, I mean, that's the gold standard. That's something they really, really want.

So it's very important that this doesn't get turned into a negative for them as businesses. It's a really difficult balancing act. to ensure trust to maintain trust with those consumers, there needs to be enforcement. That's what the CFIA is doing. But if that enforcement and if the public perception of that enforcement crosses a line and starts saying, they're all breaking the rules and it doesn't work, then it kills the movement, a movement that has been really beneficial.

At what point is this enforcement building trust? And at what point does it erode trust? And I don't think anyone would argue that enforcement is a bad thing. but the entire industry, I think, has a real stake in getting this right. Not just the retailers and the trust we just talked about, but as Kate says, a whole movement of Canadian makers, processors, growers who want to continue to be supported. And honesty in advertising is a huge part of that. Susan, Kate, thank you so much. Thank you.

Thanks. That was Susan Khrinsky Robertson and Kate Hellmore. They're both journalists for the Globe's Report on Business. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our intern and associate producer is Finn Dermot. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin and Mahal Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.