- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
The CFIA can impose fines of up to $15,000 per offence. No fines or other penalties were issued in the cases, including one that took four months to fully resolve.
The federal food regulator said it “took action” in each case and that, in all of them, the grocers fixed the problem.
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.
You are not wrong. But what is really annoying is the government is holding lawful citizen to a very high standard, where they would fine you at every chance they get. While being very lenient on big corporation.
I got a fine for accidentally overcontributing $600 to my TFSA account. While big corporation can keep getting away with this kind of shenanigans all the time.
I don’t believe in the “whoops we made a mistake, we don’t know what the average Canadian actually wants”, their business is in knowing what we want and how to sell it to us. That checklist you made as an example? Wouldn’t let them control exactly what they want to sell.
I know that when something can be attributed for both malice and incompetence we should most often choose the latter, but I believe it less and less when it comes to corporations (as opposed to fallible people). Also some products which have nothing at all to do with Canada have been labeled with that maple leaf. It’s not a question of “which part of this do they want to be Canadian again?” when nothing about the product is.
In the end, choosing to not fine the corpos is simply a message telling them to continue with the misleading labels as it allows them to better control what they want to sell without any fear of repercussions.