Dave Lawson is a proud Canadian who has bumper stickers that say “Canada is not for sale.” He’s fed up with grocery products plastered with maple leaves and patriotic logos that turn out to be American imports.
It’s called maple washing, and it’s on store shelves across the country.
“It’s kind of disappointing when you actually look at some of the so-called Canadian brands…. not a lot of them are made in Canada. So it’s like, ‘OK, why are we doing this? Let’s do better,'” the St. Catharines, Ont., man told CBC’s Marketplace.
In the last week, U.S. President Donald Trump made his latest tariff threats against Canada. Prime Minister Mark Carney renewed the push to “Buy Canadian” and posted a video online reiterating that the government will do the same in the projects it is supporting around the country.
Lawson is part of a Facebook group dedicated to buying Canadian, especially given calls to keep “elbows up” in response to the U.S. trade war. For him, and many others, that means picking products that are made here with Canadian ingredients.
- Watch the full Marketplace investigation on Friday, Jan, 30 on CBC-TV and YouTube, exposing more foods to watch for — and marketing tactics that can fool shoppers.
One of the products that frustrates him is Betty Crocker’s chocolate chip cookie mix. The front of the package has a maple leaf and the words “Canada’s #1 Selling Baking Mix Brand.” When you flip it over, it says, “Product of USA.”
“This is advertising trying to make it look Canadian, when in reality it’s not,” Lawson said.
Marketplace put the cookie mix and some other popular food labels to the test, and found that with patriotic packaging on some products that are actually American imports, the truth can be buried on the back, where it’s easy to miss.
The packaging is “at the very least confusing, but I would argue misleading as well,” Mike von Massow, a food economics professor at the University of Guelph, told Marketplace.
Marketplace asked General Mills, the company behind the Betty Crocker cookie mix, about its label. In a statement, the company said it highlights “Canada’s #1 Selling Baking Mix Brand” because it’s true, based on sales, and that the label is not new and reflects the pride they have “in being a part of the kitchens all across Canada.”
‘Seems as though Campbell’s is trying to sell us a lie,’ says shopper
Another example is Habitant pea soup, a French Canadian tradition with the phrase “Designed in Canada” on the front. But turn the can around and it says “Product of USA.”
Marketplace viewer Bob Bastien says he felt incensed with soup giant Campbell’s, the company behind Habitant, when he noticed where it’s made.
“It seems as though Campbell’s is trying to sell us a lie,” said Bastien, who lives in Montreal.
“Growing up as a French Canadian, pea soup was part of our diet,” he said. “I’ve always considered Habitant pea soup French Canadian, and I noticed that it’s not really Canadian.”
Von Massow says the term “Designed in Canada” could confuse shoppers, creating the impression of something being Canadian-made without actually being Canadian.
Campbell’s told Marketplace in a statement that it added “Designed in Canada” to the Habitant soup label in 2018 when it closed its Toronto soup plant, to “ensure Canadians knew these products were created by our Canadian team based on Canadian taste preferences.” The company added that it’s phasing the phrase out.
“We’ve heard people talk about maple washing, where they want to take advantage of that ‘Canadian halo’ so they’ll do things that imply more Canadianness than is actually accurate,” von Massow said.
“I think we are seeing some maple washing, whether intentional or not.”
You might think McCain Super Spirals french fries are as Canadian as it gets. The company was founded by a New Brunswick family in 1957, which still owns it, according to the McCain website.
But despite the maple leaf and the phrase “Proud Canadian Company” in the logo on the front, its Super Spirals fries are a product of the U.S. You can only tell that if you flip the bag over and read the small font on the bottom of the package.
“Everything I see here screams Canada until I turn it over and look at the fine print and it’s not,” said von Massow.
In a statement, McCain Foods told Marketplace the spiral fries are made at their facility in Maine, because the specialized machines don’t exist in Canada. The company says it rejects any suggestion that its labels are misleading, adding that 92 per cent of its potato products are grown and made in Canada and that it follows all labelling regulations.
How to decode labels
Different labels mean different things.
For example, a label saying “Made in Canada” means the product’s “last substantial transformation” happened here, not that its ingredients are necessarily entirely Canadian, said von Massow. “Prepared in Canada” means it was entirely prepared here with Canadian labour, but can include largely imported contents.
Labels like this can help consumers support Canadian food producers or businesses, but don’t necessarily mean what’s in the package is from Canada.
“Designed in Canada” or “Canada’s #1 selling brand” are marketing phrases, leaving consumers to hunt through fine print on the back for the country of origin.
Even government-required symbols can trip shoppers up. Take the Canada Organic logo, which von Massow says only confirms a product meets federal organic standards, but does not mean the product was grown in Canada.
And most maple leaves on packaging offer no guarantees.
Want to make sure you’re actually buying Canadian?
You should look for the words “Product of Canada,” which according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency website guarantees all or virtually all of the ingredients, processing and labour are Canadian.
Product of Canada “means it’s 98 per cent plus — could be 100 per cent Canadian ingredients,” said Marnie Scott, a Winnipeg woman who is so passionate about buying Canadian she started her own website.
Scott said she started the site because she “realized that a lot of the stuff I thought was Canadian actually wasn’t. So I started to make a list and that ended up growing into a website that I just couldn’t stop.”
One country that made labels more clear is Australia. There, many foods have a bar chart and a clear percentage showing how much of the product is local on the label.
They call it the Country of Origin Labelling (CoOL) system. It was introduced in July 2016 and became mandatory two years later.
The system falls under Australian consumer law and aims to provide consumers with easier-to-understand information about where their food comes from, following years of confusion with previous labelling rules, says Mick Keogh, one of the deputy chairs at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, in charge of labelling compliance.
“It’s now a food labelling information standard, which means any food that fits the criteria has to be sold with that label on it,” Keogh told Marketplace from Sydney. “Consumers get that information on virtually all the food products that they purchase in Australia.”
Sara Eve Levac, a lawyer with the Montreal-based consumer advocacy group Option Consommateurs, would like to see a similar system in Canada. She is pushing for clearer labelling laws that better protect consumers.
“Our view is that we could have a simple logo and simple information that is clearer for consumers, that can understand at a glance if the product is from Canada or not,” said Levac.
Marketplace reached out to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to ask if there are plans for simpler, clearer labelling rules. It denied a request for an interview. Instead, the CFIA sent a statement saying it “takes labelling issues seriously and wants to know about products that consumers think are labelled in a misleading manner.”
Complaints about labels can be reported to the CFIA through its food complaint or concern web page.
CBC Marketplace’s Rosa Marchitelli speaks with Minister of Health Marjorie Michel in Ottawa.
Health Minister Marjorie Michel is in charge of the CFIA. Her staff also declined multiple requests for an interview, but Marketplace caught up with the minister in Ottawa as she headed into question period on Monday to ask if the government plans to make labels on food packaging less confusing.
Michel said they are looking into “everything that can make life easier for Canadians,” including labelling rules.
