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File<\/p>\n
Buying Canadian isn\u2019t always easy.<\/p>\n
Oh, and in small block letters in both official languages, \u201cProduct of New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, there\u2019s nothing wrong with New Zealand.<\/p>\n
But at a time when we\u2019re looking more carefully about what we buy, and when many are making choices to not spend our money on products from tariff-town to the south of us, it\u2019s time for some new clarity.<\/p>\n
In Canada, food products carry two different statements about their origins: as the Canadian Food Inspection Agency spells it out \u201c\u2018Product of Canada\u2019 claims are subject to a higher threshold of Canadian content (98 per cent), while \u2018Made in Canada\u2019 claims are subject to a 51 per cent threshold of Canadian content, but should be accompanied by a qualifying statement indicating that the product contains imported content. In both cases, the last substantial transformation of the product must have occurred in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clear enough for government work, perhaps \u2014 but also, nowhere near thorough enough to be completely useful for the people picking up packages from grocery shelves.<\/p>\n
And grocery shelves can not only be confusing, they can be downright misleading. Canadian grocery chains have been caught identifying products in stores with a maple leaf, even though the products indicate they\u2019re made somewhere else. It all just muddies the water.<\/p>\n
There are lessons to be learned elsewhere, and one of the places we could be looking is to Australia. That country requires food labelling that shows how much of a product\u2019s ingredients come from inside or outside Australia \u2014 as government regulations spell out, \u201cIn addition to a country of origin statement, the marks include an indication of the proportion of Australian ingredients by ingoing weight through text and a bar chart.\u201d You can tell if a product contains less than 25 per cent Australian raw materials, or more than 75 per cent, for example. (A hat-tip here to independent journalist Todd Maffin\u2019s From Far and Wide newsletter, which recently pointed out the blue-ribbon standard of \u201cMade in Australia\u201d rules.)<\/p>\n
The clear benefit of the Australian rules is that they spell out not only that ingredients or raw materials come from another country, but what the proportion is of Australian ingredients versus imported ingredients.<\/p>\n
\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s all about letting consumers make their own informed decisions \u2014 after all, it\u2019s not enough to just talk the talk. And sometimes, even government intentions fade before the work gets done.<\/p>\n
Consider Manitoba\u2019s \u201cBuy Canadian\u201d legislation, passed by the legislature last June but still not in place because it hasn\u2019t been officially proclaimed. It is supposed to allow the government to give Canadian suppliers preferential treatment \u2014 but isn\u2019t doing it yet.<\/p>\n
An excellent example of spending a year talking the talk, without ever beginning to walk the walk.<\/p>\n
Given the right tools, Canadian consumers have a better chance of being able to vote with their wallets. So let\u2019s suggest the federal government improve its rules, and make the Canadian-made designation clear.<\/p>\n
When you sit down in the sudden Manitoba heat with your tray of barbecued burgers, you should be able to easily tell if it\u2019s Canadian beef, Canadian cheese slices, Canadian ketchup \u2014 and the list goes on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As summer seems to have arrived in Winnipeg with all the subtlety of stepping through the door into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-696817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}