Look, we don't want to pull a “buy American” and have everyone just buy Canadian stuff. It's true, though, that we don't celebrate anything that's made in Canada anymore. There are a few things now that I think are starting to brand. The companies don't do it, and governments sure don't do it.
In Ontario, for decades we've had the slogan, “Good Things Grow in Ontario”, a celebration of agricultural products. The government actively encourages the purchase of locally grown things. We've been asking the government of Ontario for decades why they don't do that for manufacturing goods.
Then we run into the Competition Bureau, which decided to change the definition of a made-in-Canada good without actually asking anyone who knew what they were talking about. Things that are made in Canada can't even be labelled as such anymore, just to make it more complicated.
They don't understand software, to reiterate Victoria's point. None of that stuff is ever considered in anything that they're doing. We need to start from the top and look at how we define a made-in-Canada good. It doesn't have to be screwed together in Canada. What about the software, the engineering, all the technology that goes into a Canadian product or service? Then we need to put some branding around it and sell it around the world as Team Canada.
If you want to talk about growing exports, we have a world-class brand image as a grower of healthy, affordable, high-quality food, yet we don't export it. One of the lowest export commodities we make is agricultural products. It's crazy. But if we branded these products as made in Canada, they would have a huge market around the world. Instead, Canadian producers often send stuff other places and then it comes back in as finished product and we buy it as Turkish or Israeli or something else, when it's all Canadian to begin with.
I think we have a problem in Canada with how we see ourselves.