With no end in sight to the trade war between Canada and the U.S., some small and medium-sized businesses are looking for ways to move more of their production back home.
The Unscented Company, a Montreal-based home and body care business, stopped contracting the production of its soaps out to a Vermont company, instead bringing it north of the border.
“I love my manufacturer in Vermont. He was perfect, but we could not afford having an American flag on one of my products,” Anie Rouleau, founder and CEO of The Unscented Company, told Global News.
Rouleau said she recently crunched the numbers and found the current round of tariffs would cost her company $150,000 by the end of 2026.
“It is significant enough to have a plan. So now we actually are executing our plan,” she said.
The company already produces 80 per cent of its stock in Canada. But Rouleau said some of the business’ ingredients are sourced from around the world, including in the U.S.
She said she is now committing to more local sourcing.
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“When you make that decision to produce here in Canada, you’re obviously making it more expensive for a while until you build your volume,” she said. “But I’m willing to postpone profitability to make sure we produce here and to create a solid and sustainable economy.”
The Unscented Company is not the only operation to make that commitment.
On Wednesday, Chapman’s Ice Cream announced it was on track to convert more than 70 per cent of its ingredients from the U.S. back to Canada or other countries.
Last year, the company announced it would absorb “all immediate increases in our costs” as President Donald Trump handed down the first round of tariffs on Canada.
Ashley Chapman, chief operating officer, said on social media this week that customers will not face a price increase on Chapman’s ice cream until March 2028.
“Not only have we managed to keep our component costs the same, but we have also partnered with other Canadian companies to reshore production of some items that have never been produced in Canada before,” she said.
There is no harm in trying to move more of a company’s supply chain back to its home country, Saibal Ray, the chair of supply chain management at McGill University, told Global News. But it is more convoluted than many may think.
“Because of NAFTA and CUSMA, supply chains were so integrated across the three countries, we have not developed competency in certain things because that was not needed,” he said. “The competency was somewhere else.”
He said this is particularly true for small and medium-sized businesses who have become specialized in a particular part of the supply chain.
“For SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) to do everything themselves at a scale, is absolutely impossible. It is impossible even for big companies, but for SMEs, it’s absolutely impossible,” Ray said.
He said he credits Canadian businesses who are proactively searching to domesticate their supply chains, but said the transition won’t happen overnight.
“We have to be a little bit more strategic, where we can bring in onshoring things,” he said. “It is much more difficult and much more expensive than people think it is.”
But with animosity between the leaders of Canada and the U.S., he said only good can come from developing more internal capabilities.
“We have to develop capability over the years,” he said. “Otherwise, again, we will face this problem down the road.”
Ya know what has never been representative of the average?
People that think their opinions matter enough to publish them.
Maybe low birthdates can be explained easily by over medication with SSRI drugs, promotion of homosexuality and the idiot notion that men can be women and women can be men and pretty much every other stupid liberal ideology.
I know nothing about any of this but I know it’s the liberals fault. I don’t know how to make anything because capitalism has stripped us of the need to take care of ourselves so we can rely on companies exploiting people from everywhere else to make my cheap products that I can’t make myself. The liberals are trying to stop these amazing companies from doing stuff that would be good probably. They want us to spend more money! Con-arny thinks we can do it… we can’t!
To answer the headline, NO.
But remember the new Canada montra “if it is not made in Canada, you do not need it”
Unless you are part of the liberal government ( or friends of), then it will be imported for you on the taxpayers back.
We will be able to do this as long as Canadian suppliers do not get greedy
They do OK in Zimbabwe, Canada should be able to manage…
All the americans do is cheat and lie…a bunch of bébé-lá-lás…pretty pathetic.
ANONYMOUS.
CANADA CAN CREATE ENVIROMENTS. ANY COUNTRY CAN, WITH GOVERNMENT HELP.
TAKE A LOOK AT ENGLAND’S EDEN.
AMERICA HAS DECLARED WAR, ON CANADA. WHETHER IT’S ECONOMICAL OR PHYSICALLY AGGRESSIVE ,ATTERS LITTLE.
CANADA, LIKE THE UK IN WW2, MUST DEFEND ITSELF.
FENDING FOR OURSELVES IS THE ONLY MEANS OF SURVIVALAGAINST A MENTAL LUNATIC.
IT CAN BE DONE. IT MUST BE DONE. REGARDLESS OF SACRIFCIAL COST.
CANADA.. STRONG AND FREE.
Make local, support local.
Could not sound any better!
Per the headline: NO
With our new best friend China combined we will be the worlds largest economy, coast to coast to coast AI data centers run by thousands of nuclear power plants, usa will be like the red headed step child, nobody hangs with them, but ya hear later in life they went postal
We are going to find out real soon how much we need the USA. them… they don’t need us.
The big difference is the USA has climates across the country to keep growing fruit and vegetables all year. Canada cannot do that because we don’t have the climates needed to grow all year. Just on a side note I will not buy South African oranges or Lemons they are no way as good as USA. I am finding that with a lot of goods coming from other countries the quality is not there and we are paying more for them. So I guess until this mess is sorted it’s going to be an interesting winter.
Where will Edmonton’s Weatherman Phil be going next?
“Can Canada supply itself?”
We import 70 percent of our food. Last I checled we don’t have large amounts of vegetables growing here all year long. We don’t have citrus, almond, fig, avocado, and other milder temperature fruit trees.
So good luck with that.
Yes so lets leave USA behind us dont say nothing
Obviously not
If the bleeding hearts of the world ever had to at back what they owe in blood, the would need to be breeders that sacrificed their own children.
Right? People are overdosing on opioids from China and India while Carney cozies up to both because orange face dumb-dumb bad.
I want to stop living in a world that thinks it already solved all of its own problems while people die in the street of starvation, the elements, abuse and murder.
If you want to stop being a child, perhaps consider that your government is effectively choosing envy as it’s virtue.
Those that prosper are not the sinner. The one that attacks success is the sinner. So safety billions of people from multiple religions.
It could always supply itself. It’s not enough. Unless we find non-tariffing countries for foods, food will waste and Canadian farmers and grocers will be forced to charge more, or shrink production to maintain their office acutrements.
Too many Canadians are not realizing how closely tied our salary growth has been strictly due to trade with the US.
You can maybe afford it, but most Canadians cannot and your protest is a death sentence to thousands of small businesses, and those employed by them which hardly supports Canadian industriousness.
Canada isn’t reliant on the US any more than the US is reliant on us
That’s just a left wing delusion