A shopper in Milton found blackberries sitting under a shelf tag that read “Product of Canada” while the package itself said “Product of USA,” CTV News consumer reporter Pat Foran reported Thursday. Walmart told CTV it works to correct country-of-origin errors when it learns of them. The mismatch is a small one, but it lands in a year when a great many shoppers are reading those labels closely — and the rules behind them are stricter, and narrower, than most people assume.
“Product of Canada” is the harder claim to earn. Federal guidance sets it at all or virtually all — at least 98 per cent of the total direct costs of producing the good have to be Canadian, and the last substantial transformation has to happen here. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency treats anything under about two per cent of the product as the negligible remainder that a Product of Canada claim can tolerate.
“Made in Canada” is a much lower bar: at least 51 per cent of direct costs incurred in Canada, the last substantial transformation in Canada, and a qualifier attached to the claim — “made in Canada from imported ingredients,” or from domestic and imported ones. A substantial transformation means the goods come out fundamentally changed, a new and different product, not merely repacked or relabelled.
The part that matters for a shelf tag is that the CFIA’s origin rules are written to apply at all levels of trade, not only to what is printed on a package. Misleading origin claims also fall under the Competition Act, where the civil penalties for a corporation reach $10 million for a first finding and $15 million after that.
Shoppers who believe a product’s origin has been misrepresented can report it to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which investigates country-of-origin complaints.
