Why cutting U.S. dependence by 50% starts with Canadians choosing Canadian.
By Leni Spooner, creator of Between the Lines.
I didn’t even make it home before finishing the raspberries I picked up at Herrle’s. Sweet, tart, perfect — and gone in a fifteen-minute drive. That’s the funny thing about Canadian food: it’s here in abundance, but too often it disappears before Canadians themselves get a taste. Our shelves are stacked with imports while Canadian produce, baked goods, and oils head south across the border.
It’s a paradox we’ve lived with for decades. But new research from Farm Credit Canada (FCC) suggests we don’t have to.
The $2.6 Billion Opportunity
FCC analyzed how Canada could diversify $12 billion worth of food exports away from the U.S. to reduce trade risk. Buried in that analysis is the kicker:
“Approximately $2.6 billion in current food and beverage exports to America could be redirected to meet Canadian demand.” — Farm Credit Canada, 2025
That’s not abstract economics — that’s dinner on the table. It’s the bread in your grocery aisle, the vegetable oil in your frying pan, the berries you eat before you make it home.
Buying Canadian isn’t just a way to send a message to Washington. It’s a way to make sure Canadians actually eat what we grow.
Why Feeding Ourselves Is Harder Than It Should Be
If this sounds obvious — keep Canadian food in Canada — it’s not. Our food system wasn’t built with “east-west” in mind.
- Big-box gatekeeping. Five grocery chains dominate the Canadian market. As the Competition Bureau bluntly put it:
“Canada’s grocery industry is concentrated, with five retailers accounting for most sales.” — Competition Bureau, 2023
- For a small food producer to get national shelf space, they need volume guarantees, to pay slotting fees, and to pass compliance programs designed for multinationals. Even Walmart’s vendor rules can require “on-time, in-full” perfection that a small jam maker or regional bakery can’t deliver without scale.
- Trucking costs. Statistics Canada says transportation is the number one obstacle to selling across provinces. Moving goods across Canada’s 5,500 km span can be more expensive than shipping them to Chicago or New York.
- Regulatory hurdles. Shipping across provincial borders means federal food-safety licensing and, in Quebec, strict French-language labeling rules. Necessary? Yes. But they add costs that small producers struggle to absorb.
The irony? It’s often simpler for a Nova Scotia producer to sell into Maine than into Manitoba.
Why It Matters for Consumers
This is where we come in. Buy Canadian isn’t just patriotic window-dressing or a protest against tariffs. It’s the pressure valve that makes interprovincial trade possible.
In my own kitchen, I’ve seen how intentional buying reshapes what we eat. I found an excellent producer of non-GMO, cold-pressed canola oil — Northern Prairie Gold from Saskatchewan — and the only way I can reliably get it is through Amazon.ca. One way or another, I have to go out of my way to make sure my grocery hauls are more Canadian and less imports. The quality is there. Since focusing on Buy Canadian, my household is enjoying higher quality and, yes, healthier meals.
This fall my partner and I are spending a mini vacation a few hours away in Collingwood simply so I can stock up on late-season apples to make the winter’s supply of apple sauce and apple butter — and to bring home artisan honey, sauces, and preserves I can’t find anywhere else. That’s what feeding ourselves looks like when the system doesn’t make it easy: you plan, you seek, and you savour the difference. The rest of the year I will be depending on area farmer’s markets and the like.
As I wrote in The Great Canadian Grocery Hunt:
“The struggle to buy Canadian groceries isn’t a failure of personal will; it’s a symptom of a system designed to serve global interests, not local ones.” — BTL, Aug 2025
When shoppers pick Canadian bread over a U.S. import, or Canadian oils over bulk American blends, they create the demand signals that justify distribution investments. They help the local jam maker clear the hurdle of shelf-space fees. They nudge grocers toward east-west supply instead of north-south dependence.
And they anchor resilience here. If tariffs, politics, or supply shocks hit south of the border, Canadian shelves are still full.
Policy & Infrastructure Shifts We Need
Of course, consumer choice alone can’t solve structural issues. To make the $2.6 billion redirection real, Canada needs:
- Fairer retail rules. That’s where the Canada Grocery Code of Conduct comes in. This isn’t legislation but a voluntary, industry-led framework designed to make grocery supply chains more transparent and fair. The Office of the Grocery Sector Code of Conduct (OGSCC) was established in March 2025 to oversee its rollout. Members began aligning to the Code on June 1, 2025, and full compliance is expected by January 1, 2026. While it won’t regulate prices or force grocers to stock specific products, it aims to reduce hidden fees, clarify contracts, and provide dispute resolution — all changes that could make it less punishing for small suppliers to get onto national shelves.
- Logistics investment. Food hubs, cold-chain capacity, and better east-west distribution can help SMEs get their products beyond local farmers’ markets.
- Regulatory streamlining. Internal trade agreements need teeth so that selling from Nova Scotia to Alberta isn’t harder than shipping across the U.S. border.
This isn’t a new theme for BTL readers. In Paradox of Plenty we looked at how Canada often sells abundance abroad while importing basics back. In Rebuilding the Missing Middle we explored the infrastructure gaps that make it so hard for small and mid-sized producers to scale. This is where those threads come together: sovereignty depends on the middle layers that connect farm fields to grocery carts.
From Tariffs to Tables
The U.S. tariffs and lectures may have kicked off this conversation. But the bigger point is right here at home: Canada can feed itself better if we choose to. The FCC’s $12 billion target means cutting our reliance on the U.S. in half. Roughly $9.4 billion of that shift will require expanding into Europe and Asia. But $2.6 billion can be solved right here, by Canadians for Canadians.
As FCC put it:
“Strengthen inter-provincial trade so that sales to the U.S. can be redirected to meet domestic demand, substituting U.S. imports with Canadian products.” — FCC, 2025
That $2.6 billion can be addressed simply by you and I staying firmly committed to Buy Canadian. Every time we keep Canadian oils, bread, apples, preserves, and baked goods on our own shelves, we chip away at over-reliance on U.S. trade.
This is more than groceries. It’s sovereignty, resilience, and the confidence that Canada can feed itself first. From tariffs to tables, the future starts with what we choose to put in our carts.
I don’t know about you, but exploring opportunities for buying Canadian has been satisfying on a variety of levels, not the least of which is coming home with a wider variety of not just tasty… but often healthier goods than I have routinely bought in the past. For me this has rolled into my repertoire of lifelong habits. I hope it can be for you as well.
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Additional Reading
$2.6B redirect → FCC report.
Grocery concentration / shelf access → Competition Bureau.
Top obstacle = transport cost → StatCan Daily (2025).
Interprovincial licensing → CFIA (SFCR licence). Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Québec packaging/signage rules → OQLF pages.
Retail fees example → AAFC QP note on Walmart 2020.
Fair-dealing reforms → Grocery Code (site + AAFC QP timeline).
“How to fix logistics” → Food hubs + LFIF programs.