this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025

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As ‘Buy Canadian’ grows, more US companies say retailers turning away their products (www.reuters.com)

submitted 3 months ago by RandAlThor@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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[+] dwazou@lemm.ee 78 points 3 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

[deleted]

[–] Albbi@lemmy.ca 22 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Don't forget to stop using your credit cards! They're all American an take a percent of all transactions.

[–] ploot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes, Interac debit is an alternative in many situations, and that's a Canadian company.

[–] Hastur@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

i don't get cashback on debit

[–] MacroCyclo@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

Cashback is stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

[–] Chee_Koala@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I have a CC while being an EU citizen. Main reason is calamity while traveling, it's just accepted at so many places so it could bail me out. I still buy 99,99 % of my stuff debit though, I don't need most purchases ensured, also i don't like doing my finances one month behind, I like it one month ahead, so paying my CC bills after 30 days is a net negative for me.

Do I understand correctly that 'cashback' is the fact that if you return stuff, you get the refund cash and not wired to your account/digitally put back on the debit card? If so, can you explain the importance of that for your situation? If not, could you explain to me what 'cashback' means in this context?

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

No, cashback is literally a "use this credit card and we'll give you 1% of your money back as a reward" then they charge the vendor 3% to process the transaction.

[–] Chee_Koala@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Oh, ok.. gosh... Thanks for explaining.

[–] Hastur@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

but you can easily get more than 1%. You can easily get 4% for stuff like gas and groceries. It adds up to quite a bit over the course of a year

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 months ago

Yes and no, those rewards increase the prices charged by the retailer.

Then the credit card company's ban charging extra to cover that.

It's inherently a monopolistic exploit.

[–] ploot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 3 months ago

I'm not the person you were asking, but:

Cash back credit cards reward you by refunding a percentage of your purchases made using the card. You can use this refund as a credit towards your monthly balance or as cash deposited into your bank account. Some cards offer a flat percentage on all purchases, while others offer higher percentages on select categories.

Source: https://www.ratehub.ca/blog/best-cash-back-credit-cards-in-canada/

Of course, they wouldn't be doing this if you weren't paying them at least the refunded amount somewhere else - through fees, or through people's average interest payments, or through price increases applied by the stores to cover the fees they pay to the credit card companies.

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Are there no Canadian financial institutions capable of launching their own cards and payment processors? That seems like a pretty big issue if the US is still skimming money off of each Buy Canadian purchase made by any medium other than cash.

[–] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago

All the Canadian banks should start a joint venture for a Canadian credit card.

[–] Albbi@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago

The banks do take a hefty cut of that transaction fee, and visa/mastercard get a smaller cut. But that's still a lot of money going to the US for no reason.

We do have Interac here in Canada which charges a few cents instead of a percent, and it's Canadian.

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I'm going to take a slightly more nuanced take on this as someone who works in the enterprise software ecosystem.

Microsoft doesn't just sell office to the government or university anymore. Their Microsoft 365 subscriptions include e-mail, office, intranets, communications, security, collaboration tools, and even more.

You can replace the office part with Libre Office no issues, and for home use I would absolutely recommend that instead of paying for a Microsoft license, but the moment you need to start building your own e-mail servers, file sharing systems, getting software for messaging and video calls, etc. the price (software, hardware, maintenance, tech support) goes up to well above what Microsoft charges.

Unfortunately, Microsoft provides decent value.

I'd love to see a non-American competitor that offers such a comprehensive business package, but there isn't even a realistic American competitor at this point, Google is the closest with Google Docs/Sheets, Gmail, Google Meet, Google Drive but having used it extensively it's still falls short of what Microsoft is doing and of course it's also American.

If you need to sign up to 6 different companies to get the same functionality coverage it's never going to be as integrated, as easy to use, or as cheap.

[–] Dearche@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

It's really unfortunate, but this is completely true. Microsoft has a virtual monopoly on the integrated business suite, and between cost and ease of use, nobody else, nor any combination of competitors, is even close.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Many of the things you listed are available as free software through opensource projects. Microsoft just bundles it all making it easy.

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And runs the server required stuff on their own hardware.

I mentioned this in my comment.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Which is cheap. You can run a lot on a pi these days. Or setup a higher powered nuc. MS chargers for server and now named user licenses.

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You can not run enterprise business functions on a pi unless your "enterprise" is made up of a single user.

Even something like basic video steaming for internal training videos would kill it due to encoding issues. Let alone the impact from one service affecting others like a user file transfer affecting the speed of messaging or email, or a complex database activity momentarily taking out your task management application.

You would need a dozen of them for splitting services and redundancy, then a UPS and redundant internet connections. It would end up costing you a few thousand dollars just in hardware before you even started paying someone to set it up and keep it running.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 months ago

We selfhost a lot for work. Was paid services before but cost kept creeping up. Companies have IT anyway, so it is really not a huge expense to manage your own services.

[–] FreeBooteR69@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 months ago

Linux/libre-software user since 2006. Stop funding this hostile foreign power. It is in Canadians best interest to get out from under the autocratic techno-elite paradigm. Embrace freedom, leave your serfdom behind.

[–] mintiefresh@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago

I dual boot Linux and haven't touched my Windows partition since this all began.

My small form of protest haha. And you're right, Libre Office is sufficient for my needs.

[+] imrighthere@lemmy.ca 42 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 51 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Every time I see American news about Canada, it is striking how they are so completely clueless about how infuriated the Canadians have been with the US lately.

This isn't just one of the usual quarrels we have with them from time to time. This is an existential threat. Canadians are kept awake wondering if they'll have to wage guerrilla warfare against an invader in their future. All of this because the spoiled rich toddler the Americans have elected has decided that he is entitled to Canada.

[–] Polkira@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 months ago

I have never once in my life thought about owning a gun. I hated the idea of ever having one in my home. Now I'm kind of wondering if I should get one in the event the US does invade...

[–] TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social 19 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This CEO apparently thought the US treating Canada like they are under sanctions, while threatening to invade them, is how you normally treat your biggest trade partner and close ally.

In this upside-down you have Trump repeatedly threatening to invade Canada and Greenland while only being "upset" with Putin. He has got the whole US in travel advisories of close to a dozen countries at this point (not just the wacky Red States), and we are only 3 months in.

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Maybe it’s more they’re so used to Americans putting up with getting screwed that it’s surprising that we aren’t.

[–] TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social 3 points 3 months ago

True, last time they gave corporations bailouts (to "increase job growth and the economy") they used for CEO bonuses and stock buy backs. However this time around Trump only seems interested in pardoning felony level corruption & assault (J6), while being all over the place with tariffs and Ukraine.

[–] Grabthar@lemmy.world 32 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I can see the difference in my pantry versus what is on the grocery store shelves today. Tins that used to proudly state Product of USA Imported by some company in Mississauga ON, now only mentions the importer and hides the country of origin. Evidently many American companies are ashamed to be associated with their own country.

[–] AGM@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 months ago

For me, a product with no clear country of origin goes back on the shelf. If I'm not sure where it's a product of and there's a possibility of it being American, I'm not buying.

[–] veroxii@aussie.zone 8 points 3 months ago

Time for some laws about country of origin labelling then. In Australia there are clear laws about this since 2016. Pretty sure the EU has something similar.

https://business.gov.au/products-and-services/product-labelling/country-of-origin-food-labelling

[–] Sdes01@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 months ago

AliExpress is my new Amazon.