Are you a Canadian business worried about the 25% tariffs with the U.S.? (Let us know @workhauslife!) In this article we highlight the new apps and tools designed to help you buy Canadian.
Buying Canadian has been and continues to be a powerful way to support our local economy. In times of economic uncertainty, doing so becomes even more crucial. Canadians have always come together in the face of adversity – that is not new. When the pandemic hit, signs of “We’re in this together” populated shop windows across the nation and “Shop local” became a mantra. We even saw new resources like not-amazon.co created. Crowdsourcing was at an all time high to help create food security for our most vulnerable. Much of our advice on how to support small businesses during the pandemic still holds true today.
Now, facing significant tariffs from the U.S., the consensus is clear: supporting local businesses is as important as ever. Supporting Canadian businesses, especially small businesses and entrepreneurs, is at the core of what we do at Workhaus. We’re happy to see the collective of businesses, consumers, and governments taking the necessary actions to mitigate the impact of tariffs. The push to support Canadian business has given rise to a nationwide “Buy Canadian” movement, garnering widespread support. For those seeking to contribute, a wave of new resources has emerged to help. In this article, we’ve compiled a list of innovative apps and tools to support the movement.
In the past few months, the Buy Canadian movement has been embraced on all levels, from consumers to government. Ahead of the recently postponed February 4th tariff date, Premier Doug Ford ordered the LCBO to remove all American liquor from its shelves. That order was narrowly avoided by the postponement of tariffs to March 4th. The Premier also vowed to end Ontario’s $100M contract with American internet provider Starlink.
In Toronto, City Council voted in favour of developing a “Buy Local, Buy Canadian” campaign. The campaign encourages and assists Torontonians in supporting the economy and protecting jobs by buying Canadian goods and services. Council also voted in favour of formally requesting that the Federal government develop standardized labelling for Canadian goods. These new labels will clearly display “percentages of Canadian content along with any and all foreign content.”
If the new labels materialize, they bring much needed clarity to the current guidelines, which have caused some confusion. Current guidelines allow for two distinct labels: ‘Product of Canada’ and ‘Made in Canada’. To be labelled a ‘Product of Canada’, goods must contain at least 98% Canadian content. Items labelled ‘Made in Canada’, meanwhile, are only required to contain a minimum of 51% Canadian content.
While consumers have taken to social media to promote the Buy Canadian initiative, some businesses are already seeing the benefits. However, the lack of clarity in our labelling standard has left other businesses and consumers confused, resulting in hampered efforts to buy local. In response, innovative apps like Shop Canadian, Check the Label, and others have emerged to help bridge the knowledge gap. These tools allow consumers to easily identify Canadian products and directly support Canadian businesses. The stories behind the creation of these apps reinforces the incredible potential of the Canadian entrepreneurial spirit and the power of community-driven solutions in times of need.
Shop Canadian is an app that helps consumers identify Canadian products. It was co-founded by Albertans WIlliam Boytinck and Matthew Suddaby, both software developers at RAMP InterActive. “The idea originally came to me because I was trying to figure out if what I was eating was Canadian. And the packages aren’t always clear,” Boytinck told the Edmonton Journal.
It works primarily by collecting user-generated data about products and ranking those products on how Canadian they are. Users can identify a product by scanning its bar code, which Shop Canadian will cross-reference with its database. The app was immediately embraced by Canadian Shoppers. It even hit number one in the Shopping category on the App Store in early February. And Boytinck and Suddaby aren’t done yet:
“In the next few days we’re rolling out a feature for local businesses to gain traction all over Canada with a comprehensive directory that is easy to use and navigate. We’re looking for any 100% Canadian businesses who would like to get a little extra bump in exposure to contact us.”
– Boytinck, in a recent post on LinkedIn.
Shop Canadian is available on the App Store and Google Play.
O SCANada was created by Calgary mother-son app designing team, Cathy and Ryan Checora. It allows shoppers to identify product origins by scanning a barcode or manually searching the product by name. The app uses AI to gather info and determine whether the product is Canadian or not. If it’s not, the app can provide a list of alternative products that are Canadian. Cathy told Global News, “Really, it came to me quite suddenly when I woke up one morning thinking about the news, and you know, the desire of people to buy Canadian.”
O SCANada is available on the App Store and currently being tested for Android.
Check the Label functions in a similar way, allowing users to scan barcodes to get manufacturing information about a product. The app then uses an AI-assisted search to gather additional information and determine the product’s origin, making it easier for consumers to buy Canadian.
“They were looking at mustard, I think, and he was doing a little bit of Googling along the side, and realized that Canadian mustard is actually made (in the U.S.). Like we harvest the mustard here in Canada, it’s shipped across the border for production, and then it comes back across the border so we can buy it, and we do that with so many products,” Co-founder Sam Jenkins told the Edmonton Journal.
Jenkins co-created Check the Label with Estyn Edwards, his business partner and co-founder at Punchard Systems. Punchcard builds custom software, apps and other tools for growing businesses, giving the two a fantastic base of experience to draw from. Punchcard was even recognized by the globe and mail as one of Canada’s top growing companies of 2024, with 207% revenue growth over the past three years. Sam also co-founded Startup Edmonton, a growing community of entrepreneurs (now a part of Edmonton Unlimited). SE offers programs designed to help founders get started, grow their businesses, network and connect with experts.
Edwards told Taproot that he thinks the app might help “push our politicians to have a little bit more say, and maybe hurt the people that are forcing these tariffs. If you had one customer, and they made up 80% of your business, you would probably build a strategy to find more customers. I think this is the story that Canadian businesses need to be reinforcing with our elected officials.”
Check the Label is available on the App Store and Google Play.
MadeinCa is an online directory of Canadian businesses and products. It allows users to browse by categories, with everything from household goods to internet services, furniture and electronics. It also features a recently added grocery guide, grouped/organized by categories like breads, meats, baby products, and other grocery essentials. The site’s information is entirely user-generated, with submissions coming from all over Canada and verified by the owner of the website.
Originally created by an Ontario teenager named Tyler Campbell in 2018, it was taken over by digital media consultant Dylan Lobo in 2022, who calls it a passion project.
“I’ve always believed in buying Canadian. My parents instilled that in me during our countless trips to farmers’ markets around the GTA during my childhood. It was inspiring to meet those farmers—community members who were passionate about their produce, rather than faceless corporations seeking to maximize profits above all else. So when I heard about Made in CA back in 2018, I immediately loved the idea.”
Lobo, in a recent feature by Maclean’s.
Lobo currently runs MadeinCa on his own, operating out of a Canadian coworking space. And if its user base continues to grow, he will likely need to bring on some team members. Lobo also told Maclean’s that traffic spiked exponentially following the inauguration, increasing almost 20 fold in 3 weeks. In the wake of tariff threats, Lobo told the National Post that the website had been flooded with over 5,000 product and business submissions.
Browse Canadian Products and Services at MadeinCa.ca
Support Canadian is a web browser extension created by Aiden Haldane, a double-degree student at UWaterloo and Laurier. The web extension brings Canadian made products to the top of Amazon search results and redirects shoppers from American websites to Canadian alternatives.
“There was no one really addressing what’s going on when people are online and how you’re going to these online websites,” Haldane told CTV. “And you might forget that these are American owned, so that was kind of the approach I took when creating it.”
With over 1,000 users, Haldane projects the extension can currently help keep $2.4 million within the Canadian economy each year.
The Support Canadian web extension is available for Firefox, Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.
While these times may be uncertain and anxiety inducing, it’s comforting to know that we’re all coming together to support local by embracing the Buy Canadian movement. Meanwhile, the apps and tools designed to assist you along the way are a testament to the ability of Canadians to adapt, innovate, and support one another. Supporting Canadian businesses is above all an investment in our collective future. Regardless of what transpires between Canada and our Southern neighbors, doing so is and always will be important.
In the coming days we’ll highlight a handful of inspiring Canadian startup success stories. These stories demonstrate that buying Canadian and supporting the local economy not only maximizes the impact of your dollar, but also strengthens and empowers today’s Canadian businesses to continue growing and evolving into tomorrow’s industry leaders and job creators.
Are you a Canadian business worried about the 25% tariffs with the US? Let us know @workhauslife.
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