I tried to get on with this “Buy Canadian” protest. But ketchup, a basic north American staples far as I’m concerned, has no major Canadian only manufacturers. The only stuff you can find is boutique stuff that’s like 10 bucks for 500ml. and you have to have it shipped to you.
I found this government report on the Canadian Field Vegetable Industry
Tomatoes are the most popular field vegetable grown in Canada making up 23.9% of production. That equates to around 543,000 tonnes produced per year. 98% of all tomatoes are grown in Ontario and most tomatoes are used in “processing”. However, Canada is one of the top importers of vegetables in the world with tomatoes being 5th place in most imported vegetable. An additional 177,000 tonnes are imported (mostly from Mexico and USA) to supply demand.
So while we produce a lot, it still isn’t enough to cover domestic consumption. I’m sure we could make domestic ketchup, but it would be taking away from tomatoes already being used somewhere else in Canada.
We never needed to grow it all here because of our trade partnership with the States.
Since that’s never coming back, we should be able to scale our hothouse (indoor production) tomatoes for the extra demand.
Since tomatoes can be made into non perishable goods, there’s far less risk to farmers, even if you overproduce.