Journal · 2026-08-12

What 'Product of Canada' actually means on a label

Two similar-looking phrases with very different thresholds behind them.

The two phrases you will see most often on Canadian food packaging are 'Product of Canada' and 'Made in Canada' — and they are not interchangeable.

'Product of Canada' is the stricter of the two. It signals that essentially all of the food content and processing is Canadian, with only negligible imported input such as spices or additives.

'Made in Canada' is the looser claim. It indicates the last substantial transformation happened here, and it is normally required to carry a qualifier telling you whether the ingredients were domestic, imported, or both. That is why you see the long phrase 'Made in Canada from domestic and imported ingredients' on so many packages.

Neither phrase tells you anything at all about who owns the company. A foreign-owned multinational can legitimately print 'Product of Canada' on a jar filled at its Ontario plant. That is not deception; the label is answering a different question than the one most shoppers are asking.

For non-food goods the rules differ again, and for retailers there is effectively no labelling standard at all — a Canadian-owned store is full of imported products, and nothing on the shelf will tell you which is which.

The practical takeaway: read the qualifier, not just the headline phrase, and treat the label as evidence about production only.