In the 2018 Report of Canada’s Economic Strategy Tables, the Agri-Food Table recommended a review of the guidelines for “Product of Canada” and “Made in Canada” labels “to respond to consumers increasingly looking to purchase Canadian products and enable greater industry usage of the claims”. One of the six signature initiatives proposed by Canada’s Economic Strategy Tables was modifying this policy in order to help advance and refresh the “Canada Brand” initiative domestically.
Industry also identified revisions to the “Product of Canada” labelling requirements as a potential short term deliverable as part of the TBS Regulatory Review of the Agri-Food and Aquaculture Sector, in 2018. Moreover, the Government of Canada made an announcement November 28, 2018, in the context of reducing interprovincial trade barriers, that the Government is “clarifying labelling regulations to help food industry produce and market Canadian products”.
In response to these recommendations, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) hosted an industry workshop on February 15, 2019 to identify the limitations with the current policy and to propose recommendations for revising the “Product of Canada” and “Made in Canada” voluntary labelling policy.
AAFC is now seeking your feedback on the revisions as proposed by the workshop participants. The questionnaire should take approximately 30 minutes to complete and will be available until April 18, 2019. The questionnaire is available at: https://form.simplesurvey.com/f/l/labellingguidelines