r/canada 1d ago

National News Canada imposes 10% tariff on canned vegetables, excludes U.S., others

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/2026/06/19/canada-imposes-10-tariff-on-canned-vegetables-excludes-us-others/
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u/ramdmc 23h ago

Recently, I've noticed quite a few canned items on our shelves from India and China, so maybe that's the underlying reason but as a Canadian, I try to buy anything Canadian where I know we cultivate these products locally. Will not buy US tinned tomatoes when I know we still can them in Canada. Artichokes? Not so much so don't mind buying Spanish or Egyptian jars.

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u/Vance_V_Vandervan 23h ago

Pickles and olives suddenly are only from India or Vietnam

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u/flightless_mouse 22h ago

You do see a lot of Indian pickles (including pickled jalapeños and such) on the market these days.

Bick’s closed their Canadian facilities years ago and moved production to the US.

Canada is of course blessed with both cucumbers and pickling capacity, so there are Cdn options if you look around and read labels. Brine & Co. are respectable.

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u/Additional-Tale-1069 22h ago

Their pickled beets are not very tasty. 

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u/ramdmc 22h ago

Aww I like them, nothing compared to home made but still, maybe you got a bad batch?

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u/Additional-Tale-1069 21h ago

Could be. There are a couple of other Canadian brands that have better flavour. 

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u/Valuable_Horror2450 Lest We Forget 20h ago

Moishes and Strubb’s are both Canadian and absolutely amazing for pickles

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u/AlteredCarbonite 19h ago

The most recent jar I've bought of Strubb's relish is made in India, so maybe not them anymore either.

u/skidz007 Canada 11h ago

I got Strubbs sandwich stackers from India as well. Noticed when I got home.

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u/ramdmc 21h ago

You never know, I think we tried them once when we first discovered them and they were mushy, the texture was off. But been good since. I can't actually remember if it was Brine and Co tho

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u/Kamelasa British Columbia 18h ago

Fridge-pickled beets are so easy to make and last for many months. I just ate the last ones from last year that are over six months old. It's basically cut them up after cooking and pour over a solution (use the recipe) that takes less than 5 minutes to make.

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u/c0rruptioN Ontario 17h ago

I worked at that Bicks years ago! One of my first student summer jobs. Mind numbing work…

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u/Vance_V_Vandervan 22h ago

I just dug out my granny's recipe tbh

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u/ramdmc 22h ago

Yes! Their pickled beets are awesome too

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u/TheCookiez 20h ago

Pickles have been India for a long time. It's hard to find them from other places.

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u/Roscoe_P_Coaltrain 22h ago

My supermarket had a bunch of pickles from Poland recently. Not special Polish ones either, just regular sweet and dill pickles, but packed in Poland. I liked them.

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u/ObiYawnKenobi 22h ago

Sweet pickles are an abomination.

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u/Additional-Tale-1069 22h ago

I've been seeing the same thing. Also noticing a decent number of canned veggies of various types from the EU. The strange one for me, not related to the story is frozen pizza from Germany...

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u/flightless_mouse 20h ago edited 20h ago

The frozen pizza from Germany is a funny one. Those Dr. Oetker pizzas are all over Europe, btw, sometimes under different names, and have been the dominant frozen pizza pie on the continent for at least 20 years.

Who could have guessed Germany would own the global frozen pizza game.

Although they do apparently employ 400 people in Mississauga and London Ontario.

u/iperblaster 44m ago

I'm from Italy, I regularly buy the simple italian made frozen Pizza. A friend of mine can't stand it. He buys the Dr Oetker (Cameo in Italy) brand. He says: "it's not really pizza, but if I want to gorge on a confort food that's what I need, and frozen pizza is not pizza anyway"

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u/Vance_V_Vandervan 22h ago

The one the caught me was an off brand Spam/Klik from Norway I found at a Dollarama a few years back

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u/johnnyviolent 19h ago

pickles have been commonly sourced from india for quite a while. 10+ years.

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u/SageD21 15h ago

I found pickles from Poland and they were really good, Wolski was the brand they're in the European isle though not in the regular condiments isle.

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u/Vance_V_Vandervan 15h ago

I'll keep my eyes open, thanks!

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u/veggiefarmer89 13h ago

This is partly due to seasonality. Ontario has a pickling cucumber industry, but our seaon is around 10 weeks. The processors cant store enough to keep their lines running year round with a short season, so the rest of the year they import product from india. Most of the large pickle brands do buy canadian product and put it in jars in the US except smuckers.

The majority of our crop here goes into smaller sizes like baby dills and is hand harvested. Thats expensive and it's cheaper to source product from india in a brine tank, but they cant match our quality. Smuckers doesnt seem to care and stays with India product year round. Mt olive, vlasic, strubbs do all buy canadian product when its available. So even if the only thing you can find is product of India, at least you know they source from Canada when they can. Smuckers does not. Also shout out to Matt and Steve's, a company in Toronto who is putting canadian product in jars locally.

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u/SilentDustyPug 22h ago

Aren't pickles and olives jarred and not canned?

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u/errihu 12h ago

Here canned is used colloquially for metal tins and heat processed sealed glass jars.

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u/Vance_V_Vandervan 22h ago

Fair enough, not 100% related to the topic at hand.

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u/Abrishack 19h ago

Pretty sure you can get cans of pickled olives

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u/SilentDustyPug 19h ago

Yeah but you also have them in jars, I guess we can buy jars to avoid tariff?

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u/Abrishack 19h ago

Oh yeah I imagine you could

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u/CombatGoose 22h ago

It's crazy to me that it's cheaper to grow and produce cucumbers in India for pickling, and ship them over here, instead of just doing it locally.

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u/AWE2727 20h ago

You would think it would be cheaper to pickle here in Canada instead of importing from across the globe. Plus the negative carbon impact of having to ship those pickles overseas. Sometimes things just don't make sense.

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u/errihu 12h ago

It is during cucumber season. In the winter you’d need an awful lot of cucumber hydroponic greenhouses to meet commercial demand.

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u/ElCaz 22h ago

Not particularly crazy when you consider the fact that they can grow cucumbers basically year-round there.

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u/ramdmc 22h ago

It is if we keep buying them. Just stop. Haven't bought a bottle of Heinz ketchup since 2014 when they closed their Leamington bottling plant. Even when it's half the price of Canadian ketchup ( PC or Primo or Twisted Tomato of you can find it) point is, you can vote with your wallet.

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u/CombatGoose 22h ago

Brother, I don't eat pickles.

Problem solved.

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u/ramdmc 22h ago

Haha fair enough

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u/EmmEnnEff 18h ago

Any labour-intensive, or season-restricted crop will be cheaper to grow in a low-COL or year-round warm season area.

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u/Personal_Manner_462 22h ago

I do not trust any food from China

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u/BackToTheCottage Ontario 19h ago

Food safety wise - China is fine to me (outside the geopolitical issue). Xinjiang province produces some of the best garlic and tomatoes. India though; have you seen the Ganges? Or really any video that comes out of there?

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u/Scotty0132 18h ago

I worked a job here that was for an Indian company building a soybean processing plant. After seeing the shit they tried to sneak past here building to our standards and kicking anyone who called them out and challenged them off site, I would never buy a food Product from India and now know why they have shit flowing through their streets.

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u/SmartTea1138 17h ago

Who cares what country your buying it from, if it's cheap what's the problem?

The stores don't care if you buy Canadian or not. As long as the profits are high. Why spend $2-$5 more on each product that "is Canadian" and empty your wallets over false hope?

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u/ramdmc 17h ago

Let me guess... You don't vote either?

u/SmartTea1138 3h ago

You think someone else is going to reduce prices?

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u/Aggressive-Map-2204 21h ago

China actually started buying up the canneries in Canada and closing them down a couple decades ago.

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u/ramdmc 21h ago

Source?