By: Rishika Verma
As President Donald Trump has announced a 30-day hold on the 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods, a lot of Canadians have recently been changing their buying habits.
“I have been buying mostly dairy and fruits, that are from Canadian brands,” says Gagandeep Gahunia, a Psychology student at York University.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had been encouraging Canadians to avoid U.S imports and consume more Ontario and Canadian-made products.
Many Canadians have been using the Made in Canada website as a helpful place to find Canadian brands for getting clothes, electronics, furniture, household products, kitchen products and much more.
Gahunia says that she has been buying her dairy products from the Canadian brand, Black Diamond.
“I know that they [Canadian products] are more expensive, but they are easily accessible in stores,” she said.
She says that even before the trade war had begun between the United States and Canada, she would regularly consume more Canadian products than American ones.
Mercedes D'aguiar, a Seneca Polytechnic student in the Justice Administration program says that it will now become easier to know what is Canadian in grocery stores.
“Ever since it's [tariffs] have been announced, I have been buying all my products and groceries from Canadian resources,” said D'aguiar.
She says that at the moment, she has Heinz ketchup in her fridge but once it is all finished, she will be switching over to French’s ketchup.
Signs like “Buy Canadian” are being placed in many grocery stores across the country to remind Canadians that there are alternative options to U.S-made products.
“You don’t realize that half of your produce is coming from the U.S, I didn’t realize that more until after [the tariff announcement]” she said.
Prices on perishable food such as meat, poultry, fruits and vegetables, and dairy products are expected to get expensive if tariffs go forward. D’aguiar isn’t worried about that.
“We have farmer's markets, we have a bunch of different places that we can go to deal with the change, so I think that it will be harder in the beginning but we will overcome it,” she said.
Hours before the tariffs were to hit Canada and Mexico, President Trump had announced that he would be putting a pause on the order, Ontario also paused their retaliatory measures.
Some of the measures that Canada had put in place to fight back, were removing American booze off of LCBO shelves and Premier Doug Ford said that the province was going to cut off the $100M Starlink deal that was to allow remote and rural communities across northern Ontario have access to high-quality satellite internet services.
The Canadian government had also announced that they were going to put 25 per cent tariffs on $155 billion worth of American goods coming into the country, an immediate $30 billion implemented on the first day of the tariffs going into effect, and the remaining $125 billion in the next 21 days.
Ford says that the province will not hesitate to reinstate the retaliatory measures if President Trump proceeds with his tariff threat in the upcoming days.
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