Last trip to the grocery store I couldn’t find any non-US salad kits, and Silk NextMilk is made down there now, because I guess our plants were the listeria ones. Chip dip was surprisingly hard to find too, although I did it.

I’m very pleased with how many vegetables actually come from Mexico (definitely via the US though), and there’s even a few things you can get from greenhouses, so that situation is less dire than I’d expected.

  • @TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Most of my groceries are either already made in Canada or imported from Mexico. I didn’t have to change much.

    It’s not a cheap way to shop, I will admit, but it can be done. Canada makes a lot of food, especially here in BC where I live. Beef, pork, sausages, honey, dairy, milk-alternatives, breads, and so much more.

    For non-grocery items there are numerous retailers that are Canadian. London Drugs is a great one here in western Canada. Online shopping is a bit harder because Amazon is so hard to replicate, but honestly at that point I just buy from Aliexpress. If I’m going to order cheap crap online I’ll just get it from the source instead of sending money to the US.

    • @mPony@lemmy.world
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      85 months ago

      Seconded. half the stuff on Amazon is legendary brands like FleySwui08 or Glai77Zalo or Blukogluko. All highly recommended, of course.

      • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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        5 months ago

        TBH I’m not even sure why they do that. We all know it’s from the same factory in Shenzhen as usual when we see that, right? And what comes tends to be basic but functional.

    • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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      45 months ago

      BC milk-alternatives

      Yeah, I went with Earth’s Own in the end. Their attempt at copying Nextmilk has not hit the mark yet, unfortunately. Side thing - why are so many brands in Burnaby specifically?

      • @TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world
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        25 months ago

        Earth’s Own is great. I love their oat milk.

        As for Burnaby - I’m not sure exactly. Probably cheaper and more available land for commercial businesses. Vancouver is notoriously expensive and cramped.

    • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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      4 months ago

      Yes, I’ve bought two items to date from the US, due to lack of alternatives.

      Considering how much stuff I’ve bought, though, that’s pretty damn close, and it wasn’t even hard.

        • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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          14 months ago

          You’re right, I guess that’s 3 direct purchases to date. Software platforms are definitively the hardest to replace.

          • @Devanismyname@lemmy.ca
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            24 months ago

            That and there’s probably a lot of other ways you have made purchases without even knowing. My point is that don’t beat yourself up over not doing a full boycott. The fact that you’re doing what you’re doing will have an impact pretty big already. If enough people are like you, even if they aren’t perfect, will have a huge impact.

  • @BCsven@lemmy.ca
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    25 months ago

    Had to buy Corn Starch from Austrian company. Because the Fleichmann’s CANADA brand corn starch is Made in USA. And could actually find a Canadian Manufacturer

  • @deege@lemmy.ca
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    15 months ago

    Finding a cloud service provider that’s reliable and has good terraform support has been impossible. Best we could do there was switch to another American firm that didn’t seem to be a Trump-supporting sell-out.

    Otherwise it’s been pretty easy. But mostly because we already had everything.

    As a baseline my focus hasn’t been so much not buying American at all but buying from Canadian owned and operated stores as the primary entry point. So no more Amazon, etc.

    • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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      5 months ago

      That’s the next frontier for me. AliExpress looks very promising, and I’m going to bug other people I know about degoogling as well now. Streaming is a bigger question, because I’m not sure I can sell piracy, I never really watch TV alone, and while we do a lot of CBC we still need to supplement with Netflix, as of now.

      I’m not sure if I should care about the ownership of brick and morter stores, except Walmart, because they’re all personally (edit: majority) owned by the Walton family. Even if like Costco the profits go to the US, they have shareholders all over the world, and obviously the store itself is in Canada.

  • @RaskolnikovsAxe@lemmy.ca
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    15 months ago

    The hardest thing for our family are the digital services and social media. We are slowly cancelling Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, etc. But some things are used by my wife’s business (Google, Facebook, Insta) and the just isn’t a good replacement for YouTube.

    Groceries are not bad thankfully. For hardware and household items, I can usually find a Canadian product if not at least Canadian made. Not being able to order to my door with Amazon is kind of an inconvenience but really we shouldn’t be leaning on that anyway.

    Gasoline is an unfortunate reality for us, since we don’t have money for an EV right now and we need a truck to move renovation materials. And unfortunately construction supplies are sometimes a challenge to source (no way I’m going to Home Depot).

    I really hope this gives Canadian industry a chance to blossom.

    • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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      15 months ago

      Gasoline is an unfortunate reality for us, since we don’t have money for an EV right now and we need a truck to move renovation materials. And unfortunately construction supplies are sometimes a challenge to source (no way I’m going to Home Depot).

      There’s actually a full-blown refinery for diesel in Edmonton, so that’s an option, at least in western Canada.

      For household products, of course China is a titan, and Dyson is British which came up for me recently.

  • @thistlexthorn@slrpnk.net
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    35 months ago

    I’m lucky to live in a rural place with great farmers market infrastructure, so many options to buy from here. When I do go to the grocery store, buying Canadian has been the norm for quite a few years but I am making a more conscious effort, taking my time to check all the labels. Haven’t had problems so far

    • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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      25 months ago

      Nice to see another rural person. Lemmy is pretty urban on average.

      Farmer’s markets are very seasonal, of course. And like I’ve brought up elsewhere, people absolutely will resell store goods in them if they can make a profit doing so.

      • @bowreality@lemmy.ca
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        25 months ago

        Me three! We buy all our meat from local farms. And veg in summer and we grow our own. I am also increasing what we grow on fruit

  • Mike
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    25 months ago

    Purchased some local onions instead of onions from the US, along with a few other things. Salsa from Mexico. Was a small grocery run, but my purchases would have been 15% American previously - but 0% this time.

    If everyone is doing this, the numbers do start to add up quickly to a meaningful impact.

    • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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      25 months ago

      Yep. I did another mini-trip since the one in the post. The local greenhouse lettuce was sold out and some US products were on a deep sale, including NextMilk. (Since I’m pretty poor and it going bad on the shelves would be a waste, I caved)

  • @Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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    35 months ago

    Not bad. I get most of my veg from local Chinese grocery where everything is a little closer to spoil but cheaper by half and all the sourcing info is in a language I don’t read so I basically wrote that off as a whole in the name of scraping by.

    But was decently happy to learn that my spending habits were mostly Canadian centric by default anyway exempting snacks. Mind you I live in a chunk of Van where most of my fav stuff is imported from Asia through local companies and ports so my easy solve was just segwaying hard into Korean and Japanese imports.

      • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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        5 months ago

        Pretty much, right?

        I assume we all know some Americans, or ex-Americans. I’m not even close to the border and they’re around. The good ones are all very welcome.

  • @reddig33@lemmy.world
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    1015 months ago

    Considering how much stuff isn’t made in the US anymore, this should be easy. For a real challenge, try avoiding items made in China.

    • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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      15 months ago

      Hmm, I’m actually curious. SE Asia and Bangladesh probably are a viable alternative for a lot of things. Obviously, if you have an unlimited budget you can find some bespoke artisanal item made nearer by as well.

    • ikt
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      145 months ago

      sorry to butt in but that’s a hobby of mine 😀

      for example going full renewables: solar panels made in south korea (qcells), battery german (sonnen), ev south korea (hyundai ioniq), heat pump australia/japan (reclaim energy)

      I’m now looking at computer parts made exclusively in taiwan (looks like gigabyte mainly) because europe appears to have 0 competitive chip makers

      it seems you can still buy bigger items that are local or non-china made but you will be punished for it, prices are anywhere from 10% to 100% higher

      • slax
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        35 months ago

        I’ve never heard of Reclaim… How is that heat pump treating you? We got a Bryant (I believe it’s a Midea rebadged) and our solar is a Sol-Ark inverter (I still need to figure out how to get it off WiFi and just local using CANbus…) and LONGi panels.

        • ikt
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          5 months ago

          Yep sorry I’m in Aus not Canada, they’re a local manufacturer (https://reclaimenergy.com.au/), expensive as hell but felt like showing my support to at least one of the few places this still does engineering in Australia

          How is that heat pump treating you

          Really good! the separate compressor from the tank makes it whisper quiet, can barely hear it even if you’re a foot away, co2 which is the most environment friendly refrigerant, and power usage is well, minimal, only a small 160L tank because I live by myself, can see example of what it uses here (it’s the light blue bit at around 8am in the morning):

          That said it is summer here in Queensland, will have to see how it goes in winter but under 1kw a day for hot water, that’s really not bad at all imo

      • @reddig33@lemmy.world
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        65 months ago

        I went to buy a pair of scissors this week. I could not find a pair that wasn’t made in China.

        I went to buy a greeting card, 75% of them were made in China. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s a freaking happy birthday card. There is no way it’s cheaper to cut down the tree, mill the paper, send it to China on a boat, have it printed, then have it sent back to North America on another boat. WTF?

        • ikt
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          5 months ago

          yep small items i’ve pretty much given up on, nobody seems to care that $2 worth of stickers are made in China

          It just keeps going though, weirdest one for me was those little marshmallows you put on cakes:

          Coles Bake and Create Pink and White Mallows, 100g. Great for creating a delicious rocky road or topping hot drinks.

          Made in China

          https://www.coles.com.au/product/coles-mallows-pink-and-white-100g-2441652

          Really???

        • @BCsven@lemmy.ca
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          25 months ago

          Staples has online card building, you can customize all of it if you want, and it was about $2.50. Just have to plan ahead because they often print it at another facility and use the interstore shipping to get it to your pickup store.

    • metaStatic
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      305 months ago

      That’ll go about as well as reading the TOS on everything before clicking agree

  • @refreeze@lemmy.world
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    295 months ago

    I’m currently switching all my computing/cloud stuff over to Canadian and/or EU providers. I’m going to move my domains to Easy DNS and try out a VPS from LunaNode.

    • @ControllerCat@lemmy.ca
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      55 months ago

      I was about to say there’s TunnelBear VPN, but, just found out they’ve been acquired by McAfee , so boo.

    • @Grappling7155@lemmy.ca
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      35 months ago

      Would you recommend LunaNode? I’ve been looking for AWS, gcloud, Azure, and DigitalOcean alternatives and a lot are underwhelming.

      • @refreeze@lemmy.world
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        15 months ago

        I’m actually pretty pleased so far. I had to contact support to sort out a payment problem but they were incredibly quick to help me out. I think the price performance is pretty decent, but my needs are very minimal. The web ui is really straightforward as well, really no complaints.

  • Jay
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    265 months ago

    Anyone have suggestions for Canadian cat food that isn’t overpriced? I’ve got like 15 cats so I go through a lot in a month.

      • Jay
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        55 months ago

        Huh TIL. I’ve mainly been feeding them that and the co-op stuff (Which they don’t care for so I usually blend them together.)

    • @noseatbelt@lemmy.ca
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      95 months ago

      Acana is Canadian, though they are not super cheap but certainly not the most expensive either. My dogs like it, and one of them is a picky eater.