I was at the grocery store the other day and there was a bin of American broccoli completely full and untouched. The Canadian broccoli bin? Empty. Canadians would literally rather give up broccoli than buy American.
I for one picked had broccoli on my grocery list but opted for cauliflower instead.
As an American, I kinda want in on this… wondering what the best option would be locally, without needing to investigate entire supply chains.
Only thing that comes to mind are places like those family-owned Asian stores with products that at least appear to be sourced directly from whatever country to the store owner’s culture belongs to.
Any tips?
Local is the key. Or at least, it’s the best first step.
I live in a small Canadian city. Frankly there aren’t always a lot of options for me to buy Canadian brands. I’m limited by what is available to me. My response has been to go even deeper than just “buy Canadian” to “buy Local”.
Go to your local independent grocer. Go to your local independent clothing store, coffee shop, mechanic, etc… Find your local farmers market where local gardeners and producers sell their vegetables, sausages and meats. Somewhere in your city, there’s a retired person who spends their spare time making bespoke wood work furniture. Support them instead of buying your next table from Ikea.
Are the items I buy all going to be 100% Canadian. No. It’s unrealistic for most people (including myself). But my response even before all of it went to hell has been to say that wherever possible, ensure that your money is staying in YOUR community instead of being shipped off to a corporate headquarters.
That’s my thought anyway. The more local the better. Your community becomes culturally and financially more robust when we stop letting corporations take our money out of them, regardless of nationality.
Unfortunately, my community is among the ones that needs to start feeling the consequences of our bullshit. That retired woodworker, mechanic, etc are all wearing MAGA hats. I live in the cousin-fuckingly deep south - 99% of my dipshit neighbors are the part of what that fucking traitor is running our country into the ground right now.
The retired woodworker here needs to have his shop burned to the ground.
…anyway, I know of an Asian market and a Mexican market not crazy far from where I live. I’d be willing to bet I can find stuff that’s comparable to 90% of what I’m already purchasing at those types of stores. The other big ones are pharmacy and gas as far as daily spending goes… no idea what non-US options there’d be for that.
But yea I might be in kind of a weird place with specifically not wanting to support my local shops, but fuck these rednecks. I don’t want them getting a cent more of my money than is absolutely necessary.
I doubt there’s jack shit I can do to support Canadian supply chains from here, but I can at lreast try to pull out of the US ones as much as possible.
I’ve been working on degoogling. I don’t trust US tech anymore. Well, I haven’t for a while, but with recent events I’m now motivated to fix it.