Continue the campaign to “Buy Canadian”
Canada has faced defining moments before – moments where external pressures tested not just our economy, but our resolve as a country. This is one of those moments.
In 2020, Trump advisor and son–in-law Jared Kushner publicly stated that it was the U.S. administration’s deliberate strategy to create an agreement with Canada that “weaponized uncertainty,” so that the United States could return years later to exact further concessions. Today, under President Donald Trump, the trade war with Canada continues on script.
However, it is my hope we are not quietly accepting a diminished standard of living while potentially losing our place in the global economy because of Mr. Kushner’s scheme. This is not simply a trade dispute. It is a test of whether Canada will act with intention – or be acted upon.
Why buy Canadian? Let’s evaluate the present moment we are in. Ontario’s unemployment rate sits at 7.6 per cent (the United States rate remains at 4.3 per cent). Nearly one in seven young Canadians cannot find work. Our manufacturing sector has lost over 55,000 jobs since the tariff war began. Steel workers, auto assemblers, forestry communities, and farmers are absorbing a hit that was imposed on them – not earned.
At the same time, we must confront a deeper and more structural reality. Forty years after the advent of the” knowledge economy,” Canada still does not have a coherent national strategy to capture and retain wealth. This is now showing up in the data in ways we can no longer ignore. Canada’s GDP per capita has declined from roughly 90 per cent of U.S. levels in 2010 to approximately 75 per cent today.
That is not a cyclical fluctuation; it is a structural erosion of relative prosperity. You can see it every time you leave your house.
Recent reporting from Statistics Canada this week further confirms that inequality is widening across the country. Lower- and middle-income Canadians are experiencing weaker wage growth, losing savings capacity, and increasingly relying on debt simply to maintain consumption. In contrast, gains are accruing disproportionately to those with access to capital and financial assets. This divergence should concern anyone interested in long-term economic stability and social cohesion.
This is not a reason to retreat. It is a reason to act – with clarity, with discipline, and with purpose.
And how should Canadians act? When you choose Canadian steel, Canadian lumber, Canadian food, and Canadian services, you are not engaging in symbolism – you are exercising economic agency. You are making a deliberate choice about where value is created and who benefits from it.
You are keeping a wage in a London household where the unemployment rate is 9.1 per cent.
You are keeping a shift running in a Hamilton mill where the unemployment rate is 7.2 per cent.
You are keeping a young person in their first job instead of their first unemployment line.
This is what economic citizenship looks like in practice.
We need a persistent and principled approach to Canadian economic nationalism – not as a slogan, but as a co-ordinated national behaviour.
Here’s what “Buy Canadian” actually does: it keeps demand, jobs, and margins inside our borders when export channels are under siege; it reduces our dependence on U.S. inputs in sectors we cannot afford to hollow out; it signals to every foreign policymaker watching that Canada can redirect its economy – and will; it turns consumer and procurement decisions into genuine negotiating leverage in the face of U.S. pressure; it sustains the forestry towns, auto hubs, and farming communities that built this country.
As a nation, we have weathered harder moments than this. But this moment is different in one important respect: the risks we face are not only external – they are also structural and internal. Slowing productivity, declining relative incomes, and widening inequality are all signals that Canada is at a crossroads.
The question is not whether we recognize the challenge. The question is whether we respond to it together. Reach deep into the well of the Canadian identity. We should remind ourselves: we are not a branch plant. We are not a client state. We are an innovative, resource-rich, highly skilled economy of 40 million people who have every capacity to support one another in the face of external pressure. And in moments like this, national strength is not expressed in rhetoric – it is expressed in decisions.
So, to every procurement leader, business owner, and supply chain manager reading this: ask your suppliers where their goods are made. Ask them to source Canadian where they can. Ask them to stand with Canadian workers.
Because this is how a country stabilizes itself under pressure – one decision at a time, multiplied across millions.
We need to support our workers now. We need to remain economically independent. We need to protect those being left behind. We need to recommit to the common good.
Let’s not drift into a lower standard of living by default. Let’s choose a higher one – deliberately, collectively, and with confidence. Buy Canadian. Invest Canadian. Build Canadian. Be Canadian.
Charlie Mignault is the commissioner of the St. Lawrence Corridor Economic Development Commission.
