Canadians have a funny way of
expressing our national pride sometimes.
Of all things, French's ketchup became
a cause célebre across the country when it was revealed
Loblaws was going to remove the brand from its grocery store shelves.
Even more so, when it came to light later that the decision to do
this was motivated by a desire to reduce choice and improve the sales
of its President's Choice store brand.
Because French's ketchup is made from
Canadian-grown tomatoes, you know.
Until then, ketchup nationalism was not
so much of a thing. Even after mega-investor Berkshire Hathaway
bought Heinz, and closed down its Ontario ketchup factory, consumer
loyalties did not really move that much.
But a few tweets after the Loblaws
decision (and then the reversal of that decision), you'd have to be a
Trump-kissing Yankee turncoat to buy anything but French's.
Never mind that competing brands use
tomato paste made in Ontario (albeit from imported produce). Economic nationalism, like globalism, can be a complicated thing.
It might make Canadian consumers feel
better to teach the big guys a lesson from time to time, but if this
is an example of Canadian pride as expressed in the marketplace, we
still have a long way to go.
Another Canadian institution in which
we take great pride is Bombardier. We must take a great deal of pride
in the company, because we sure do give it a lot of our tax money.
In fact, we are told must give
Bombardier a great deal more tax money, or it will not be able to
compete against other very large aerospace manufacturers, who
themselves receive great amounts of tax money in their countries.
Canadian jobs are at stake, we are
told, and Bombardier is simply too important to our economy to be
allowed to fail.
So, while our national pride is being
tweaked for a giant subsidy, Bombardier says it plans to outsource
many of those very jobs to Mexico and China. If taxpayers complain
about this incongruency (and they have), we are told the situation is
... complicated.
But we're still very proud of
Bombardier, right?
We're also very proud of our nation's
resource wealth. Not just for our energy, but forestry and mining.
We've spend a lot of money protecting our softwood industry, and we
may well be about to spend a great deal more — especially if a
certain isolationist candidate wins the U.S. presidency.
But surely Canadian national pride is
deeper than the coating on a hot dog.
If we can raise a furore over what
brand of Canadian-grown ketchup we will buy, why can't we get worked
up about Canadian-developed energy?
Canadians have become indignant about
selling a few billion-worth of armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia, for
purposes outside our sworn standards of doing business.
So why don't we question buying
multi-billions-worth of Saudi oil to make fuel for our cars? This
can't be a human rights question, because Canada also imports oil
from such human rights stars as Nigeria, Venezuela — and likely
soon, Iran.
We have more than enough of our own oil
for all the myriad purposes oil is used. Why won't the Canadian
market support Canadian suppliers?
It can't be a greenhouse gas thing,
because gasoline is gasoline; it all burns the same, and we're not
going to use less of it anytime soon.
Besides, Canadian producers are already
onside to reduce the carbon footprint of their production — and our
competitors aren't. The producing provinces are already onside in
attempting to reduce their carbon footprint overall, by as many means
as prove practical (and according to some, even not so practical).
So why do Canadians glow, while driving
their Saudi-fueld cars to the grocery for a single bottle of
Canadian-grown ketchup? Ketchup delivered by great big Saudi-fueld
trucks?
Do we support Canadian tomato growers
more than we support human rights abroad, or Canadian industry at
home?
Economic nationalism must be like
paying Bombardier to outsource Canadian jobs ... complicated.
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