By Angie Sullivan
Canadian flags are waving all over our region, as our community pulls together and shows our national pride on a local level.
Bruce Cook, owner of Ontario Flag and Pole in Sutton West, said, “I’ve been in business for 17 years, and this was my biggest February ever. Sales are going nuts for Canadian flags and poles. I may run out of poles, even. The amount of support for local businesses is off-the-charts.”
Sutton Home Hardware is bringing colour and nationalism to their store with an inventive campaign promoting BeautiTone, a Canadian-made paint brand.
The Town of Georgina is being proactive about taking care of the more than 1,100 businesses in our region. They are leveraging current campaigns including, ‘Shop Local,’ ‘Grown in Georgina,’ and ‘Georgina Made.’
Mayor Margaret Quirk said, “In the wake of the United States plan to implement tariffs on Canadian goods, the Town of Georgina continues to support local businesses and is encouraging the community to do the same by choosing to Buy Canadian-Shop Local whenever possible.
Local grocery stores, like Sobeys and Steve’s NoFrills in Sutton, are adding tags to the shelves in front of Canadian products, and consumers are taking notice.
Stacey Muhammad, Udora resident, said, “I’m paying attention to the stickers in grocery stores and making an effort to buy Canadian. It just makes sense.”
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, Senior Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, said, “Food habits are hard to break but people are paying attention.”
It’s not just our local grocery stores that are making an effort. Lilian Ibrahim, owner and pharmacist at Orange Health Pharmacy in Sutton, said, “We went through our store product by product and put ‘Made in Canada’ tags on products that were made in Canada. We want people to be aware when purchasing of Canadian options.”
Ibrahim is going to the next level and finding different vendors to ensure a higher percentage of Canadian products are available in her store.
“A lot of our band-aid products are on backorder and they’re all American made by Johnson and Johnson, so we went out of our way and found a different vendor. Even our post-it notes and snacks for our staff are now Canadian-made. We’re a small business, and if we can make a difference and everyone does their part, we can really support Canada.”
If you are a small business owner in Georgina and believe you will be impacted by the tariffs, visit georgina.ca/BusinessSupport for a number of resources.
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