WINNIPEG – Every time Suzie Wisniewski grocery shops, she looks for Canadian products. For her and many Canadians that sentiment is no different when it comes to buying sweet treats for Halloween.
“I always like to try to buy Canadian where I can,” she said, while shopping for candy at Winnipeg’s Food Fare grocery store.
“It’s important for me to support the country.”
A recent online survey conducted by Angus Reid for NextDoor Canada shows a majority of Canadians are on the same page as Wisniewski.
The survey shows 59 per cent of Canadians say it’s a priority to support local or Canadian businesses when shopping for or celebrating Halloween, from pumpkins picked at nearby farms to costumes from neighbourhood shops and treats from local bakeries.
That number is higher in Saskatchewan and Manitoba at 68 per cent, and 69 per cent in Atlantic Canada.
“My neighbours next door are not very nice,” Wisniewski said, referring to the United States. “(They) don’t have very nice leaders, so I choose not to support them if at all possible.”
The push to “buy Canadian” has resurfaced over the last several months, in light of tariff tensions between Canada and the United States.
Food Fare owner, Ramsey Zeid, has placed “Made in Canada” stickers all along his store’s shelves, to help consumers identify which products are Canadian.
Halloween revives buy Canadian sentiment
But he says it’s a little challenging when it comes to Halloween candy and treats.
“I haven’t seen any Canadian-made Halloween candies but certainly see a lot of candies that say prepared in Canada,” he said.
“You’re kind of limited to your choices, right? You got your Coffee Crisps, Aeros, your Oh Henry, your Twizzlers, Nerds, that kind of stuff, and little bags of chips.”
Zeid says sourcing local products and stocking them for Halloween can also be difficult, particularly because the store doesn’t put a significant focus on seasonal candy.
“Halloween comes around once a year. It’s hard for a business to start up and prepare all these candies and invest all this money for one day a year,” he said.
“So, unless you have a consistent supply of other candies for the rest of the year, it’s hard to do it for just the one day of the year.”
Sylvain Charlebois is director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University. He says that while many familiar Halloween treats are manufactured in Canada, their ingredients and ownership may be foreign.
“There are very Canadian options out there, but they’re typically more expensive, but most candies that’ll be given out are manufactured in Canada, but most of them are foreign companies, and many of them are American companies,” Charlebois said.
“If I am a Canadian-focused shopper for Halloween, I would look around because sometimes some of these products are great, even healthy, but they’re not advertised.”
“You need to work a little harder to find them, and sometimes they’re in a pharmacy or in independent stores as well,” he said.
As Canadians fill their bowls for trick-or-treaters, the challenge facing shoppers is finding options that are both Canadian-made and budget-friendly.
The same online survey conducted for NextDoor Canada found that 88 per cent of Canadians plan to spend less than $100 on Halloween this year and about 65 per cent of Canadians set their Halloween budget at less than $50.
