Shift toward supporting Canadian brands may outlast the politics that sparked it, experts say

What began in early 2025 as an Elbows Up reaction to U.S. tariffs could easily have waned by now. Instead, evidence is mounting that national support for domestic businesses has flourished into a durable movement and a competitive operating advantage for Canadian brands.

Fifty-three per cent of Canadians now often or almost always choose Canadian products, while another 29 per cent say they do so sometimes, according to Abacus Data.

At the same time, a report by Environics Research entitled Canadian Brands: Built on Values, suggests the country has entered a new era of “conscious individualism” that’s built up for over a decade and been accelerated, not created, by recent trade tensions.

Genumark is a Toronto-based distributor of promotional products, corporate apparel and custom-branded merchandise, and is an example of a domestic business benefiting from behavioural changes. The company finished 2025 with revenue up 16 per cent from the previous year, its strongest topline year on record.’

Chief executive officer Mitch Freed points to several reasons for the strong year, including major new client wins. He’s careful not to directly credit economic nationalism, but says it became part of sales conversations and clearly swayed some purchasing decisions.

“In our industry, many products simply aren’t manufactured here,” Mr. Freed says. “We give clients real options and transparency, rather than pretending everything can suddenly be made domestically. Some buyers love knowing we purchase from a Canadian-owned importer, even when the product itself isn’t made in Canada.”

Country of origin and where a product is sourced are now central considerations for his clients, not footnotes, Mr. Freed says. That conversion hasn’t come free, either. Qualifying new suppliers and absorbing freight volatility carry real costs, some of which are absorbed by margins to avoid passing onto the end consumer.

Mr. Freed is also quick to note his business has had it easier than most. “We’re a distributor, not a manufacturer, so the structural issue of tariffs doesn’t hurt us the way it hurts businesses undergoing major restructuring right now. I have a lot of respect for what those owners are dealing with.”

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) 2026 Your Voice survey found nearly half (48 per cent) of small and medium-sized businesses that previously traded with the U.S. have pivoted to non-U.S. customers and suppliers since April 2025. Almost three-quarters (74 per cent) of those made the shift toward Canadian alternatives.

CFIB chief economist Simon Gaudreault says these findings show that Canadian-made or Canadian-imported products now carry a real competitive advantage in the market.

“For many businesses, promoting ‘Canadian-made’ or ‘Canadian-owned’ is an asset in the current context as Canadians are definitely looking to support domestic brands,” says Mr. Gaudreault. “For quite some time, marketing experts have known about the power of habits in shaping shopping decisions. These habits have changed for over a year among Canadians, who may be permanently used to shopping with a ‘Buy Canadian’ mindset.”

Ambassatours Gray Line in Halifax has directly benefitted from supportive consumer sentiment among Canadians. Ambassatours president Sean Buckland has been tracking year-over-year growth since 2023 when support for local attractions surged after the pandemic. The past two years have been Ambassatours’ best on record, and while this year’s season isn’t over yet, 2026 revenue is forecast to finish 10-per-cent higher than in 2025.

“Canadians are travelling closer to home, with Ontarians and Quebecers, in particular, coming east to Nova Scotia, many for the first time,” Mr. Buckland says. “Halifax has many local events and attractions that bring people from across the country. They form an affinity for our waterfront, and we’ve heard from many visitors that they plan to come back again.”

International travellers are visiting too, Mr. Buckland says, drawn partly by a favourable exchange rate. “We’re staffing for the remainder of 2026 based on current peak demand. We know there’s a ceiling somewhere, and we’re going to hit it at some point. We just don’t know yet if it’s 2027.”

Mr. Gaudreault says time will tell whether affinity for domestic businesses amounts to a lasting structural advantage. Still, as businesses make long-term adjustments to their supply chains and markets, he believes the country needs to set those investments up for success.

“The movement has already demonstrated the importance of reducing business barriers within the country,” says Mr. Gaudreault. “If governments continue to build on this momentum, the benefits could persist well beyond the current trade tensions.”