Are you still making an effort to buy Canadian products?

Poll: still buying Canadian?

Castanet – Sep 21, 2026 / 7:16 pm | Story: 631993

Photo: Buy Canadian scanner apps are pictured on a phone in Toronto, on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026.

Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS

Photo: Buy Canadian scanner apps are pictured on a phone in Toronto, on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026.

One app tells you a bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup is prepared in Canada, another deems it partially Canadian, while a third calls it “not Canadian-owned.”

For consumers scouring the grocery store for Canadian-made food items after the latest eruption of U.S. tariffs, it can be difficult to discern which products are truly Canadian and which aren’t.

Multiple apps sprang up promising to help shoppers buy Canadian-made products after trade tensions with the United States broke out last year.

Users typically scan an item’s bar code or logo, which then produces results on how Canadian the item is. But each app has its own methodology, making apples-to-apples comparison difficult, and the level of detail varies.

Some apps call a product partly Canadian if its manufacturing plant is in the country, but the parent company is not. Others score items depending on where it was produced, where the ingredients came from and where the money ends up.

The result is a confusing array of apps for shoppers to choose from, and questions about which one is most accurate.

Tags: