I guess we are seeing what happens to the world at large when there are mostly no consequences for questionable actions. I’m still boycotting Loblaws though, as per Per.

Why even bother having regulations with fines if you’re not gonna use them???

I don’t get it. Without the fines, grocers will just continue to use misleading signage. And in this vague of boycotts, it’s important to trust where the product is coming from. They need to be hit where it hurts (money).

Lack of consequences leads to fucks like Trump gaining power

No of course not. We love corruption and soulless corporatism in Canada, just so long as it has a little maple leaf logo on it.

I’m sure this cowardice/apathy won’t bite us in the ass, surely.

Not surprised at all. Telus, Bell and Rogers can also do whatever they want.

I will continue to read labels on products. No store signage, no app is to be trusted. Anything that doesn’t clearly state where it is made or comes from I won’t buy.

I’ll also ramp up my efforts to cut out retailers as much as possibly. Several companies ship (Simps, Attitude, Uncle Bob’s, etc). For produce and meats I buy from farm stands, farmers markets and farmers directly. Stuff is fresher and the farmer gets more money anyways. Like this weekend I only bought lemons and bananas in the supermarket, all the other veg and fruit came from farm stands. One farm stand is open from April to December so that’s covering quite a bit of the year. Our meat we buy almost exclusively from two ranches in the area. Only ham and salami from the store. I wish there was more dairy sold locally by farms I would buy that too.

The action taken? A stern finger waving or perhaps even a strongly worded letter. None of those words threatening legal consequences.

🙄

Not to give too much leeway to these companies, but I feel like the reason for this is all a confusion of what consumers are wanting.

On the part of the consumer, they want more stuff made here in Canada, but on the part of the grocery stores, they either misread the room and think they want Canadian brands, or assume they know better and go by Canadian brands seeing how so much of what we get at the grocery store in Canada either isn’t grown at demand, or can’t be grown here at all.

This would probably be best sorted with a better product labeling system enforced by the government. I used to work on Open Food Facts a lot (stopped doing so for a variety of reasons), and learned that how we label food here is so confusing when we can make it much more simplified and easier to read.

Something like a checklist format would be nice. Something like:

Canadian brand? [checkbox]
Domestically owned? [checkbox]
Canadian Ingredients? [five bars shifting from red to green, each bar being the closest 20% increment of domestic ingredients by volume]

Just this would help a tonne. You can identify truly Canadian brands and keep your dollars in Canada, and also do so more intensely if you wish by avoiding products that fail to meet a certain threshold of domestic ingredients. It prevents companies from having to assume they know better than the consumer when it comes to assuming what they actually want, and replaces the “made with domestic and imported ingredients”, “product of Canada”, and “Made in Canada” labels with something that paints a more clear and obvious picture to the consumer.

I do think there is some level of malice, but I think this is overwhelmingly just companies throwing their shoulders up in confusion when major products we buy (coffee, chocolate, tea, sugar for most of Canada) just aren’t grown here, and don’t want the less informed types spending all day looking at labels for a chocolate bar with Canadian-grown cocoa when Canadian brands are the closest thing to what they want lol.