It's impossible to do a full boycott. There's gonna be some stuff you end up getting.
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Yes, I've bought two items to date from the US, due to lack of alternatives.
Considering how much stuff I've bought, though, that's pretty damn close, and it wasn't even hard.
You canceled your Netflix etc? Not playing games in steam?
You're right, I guess that's 3 direct purchases to date. Software platforms are definitively the hardest to replace.
That and there's probably a lot of other ways you have made purchases without even knowing. My point is that don't beat yourself up over not doing a full boycott. The fact that you're doing what you're doing will have an impact pretty big already. If enough people are like you, even if they aren't perfect, will have a huge impact.
Finding a cloud service provider that’s reliable and has good terraform support has been impossible. Best we could do there was switch to another American firm that didn’t seem to be a Trump-supporting sell-out.
Otherwise it’s been pretty easy. But mostly because we already had everything.
As a baseline my focus hasn’t been so much not buying American at all but buying from Canadian owned and operated stores as the primary entry point. So no more Amazon, etc.
That's the next frontier for me. AliExpress looks very promising, and I'm going to bug other people I know about degoogling as well now. Streaming is a bigger question, because I'm not sure I can sell piracy, I never really watch TV alone, and while we do a lot of CBC we still need to supplement with Netflix, as of now.
I'm not sure if I should care about the ownership of brick and morter stores, except Walmart, because they're all personally (edit: majority) owned by the Walton family. Even if like Costco the profits go to the US, they have shareholders all over the world, and obviously the store itself is in Canada.
The hardest thing for our family are the digital services and social media. We are slowly cancelling Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, etc. But some things are used by my wife's business (Google, Facebook, Insta) and the just isn't a good replacement for YouTube.
Groceries are not bad thankfully. For hardware and household items, I can usually find a Canadian product if not at least Canadian made. Not being able to order to my door with Amazon is kind of an inconvenience but really we shouldn't be leaning on that anyway.
Gasoline is an unfortunate reality for us, since we don't have money for an EV right now and we need a truck to move renovation materials. And unfortunately construction supplies are sometimes a challenge to source (no way I'm going to Home Depot).
I really hope this gives Canadian industry a chance to blossom.
Gasoline is an unfortunate reality for us, since we don’t have money for an EV right now and we need a truck to move renovation materials. And unfortunately construction supplies are sometimes a challenge to source (no way I’m going to Home Depot).
There's actually a full-blown refinery for diesel in Edmonton, so that's an option, at least in western Canada.
For household products, of course China is a titan, and Dyson is British which came up for me recently.
I’m lucky to live in a rural place with great farmers market infrastructure, so many options to buy from here. When I do go to the grocery store, buying Canadian has been the norm for quite a few years but I am making a more conscious effort, taking my time to check all the labels. Haven’t had problems so far
Nice to see another rural person. Lemmy is pretty urban on average.
Farmer's markets are very seasonal, of course. And like I've brought up elsewhere, people absolutely will resell store goods in them if they can make a profit doing so.
Me three! We buy all our meat from local farms. And veg in summer and we grow our own. I am also increasing what we grow on fruit
Had to buy Corn Starch from Austrian company. Because the Fleichmann's CANADA brand corn starch is Made in USA. And could actually find a Canadian Manufacturer
Good to know! I've been planning on experimenting with making my own meat substitutes.
Oh what company is that?
Bakers Supply
Purchased some local onions instead of onions from the US, along with a few other things. Salsa from Mexico. Was a small grocery run, but my purchases would have been 15% American previously - but 0% this time.
If everyone is doing this, the numbers do start to add up quickly to a meaningful impact.
Yep. I did another mini-trip since the one in the post. The local greenhouse lettuce was sold out and some US products were on a deep sale, including NextMilk. (Since I'm pretty poor and it going bad on the shelves would be a waste, I caved)
Not bad. I get most of my veg from local Chinese grocery where everything is a little closer to spoil but cheaper by half and all the sourcing info is in a language I don't read so I basically wrote that off as a whole in the name of scraping by.
But was decently happy to learn that my spending habits were mostly Canadian centric by default anyway exempting snacks. Mind you I live in a chunk of Van where most of my fav stuff is imported from Asia through local companies and ports so my easy solve was just segwaying hard into Korean and Japanese imports.
I was already bracing myself to be careful at the grocery store a while back cause I'd been following the story of the US rolling back food and product regulations. It can't be fun to be doing any Kitchen/ Restaurant work right now. Last time I out I managed to find all Canadian stuff. Lettuce was the hardest, self contained was all from California. I did find a Canadian made salad kit I stripped for parts, I wish the quality was better but it was okay. I'm not a real power user of lettuce anyway. It's just going to take a bit of adapting.
I also typically buy used name brand clothing and plan to keep going with that and with entertainment I usually use the free services, used stores and thrifts and a bit of yarr matey on the side.
I did find a Canadian made salad kit I stripped for parts
What brand?
Taylor Farms.
Unfortunately, they're all made in the US where I live, based on the bags I read.
Edit: Yes, I made sure to read them all on my next trip. "No bones".
This is definitely not an exclusively Canadian company. I was looking the other day at salad kits and all the Taylor Farms bags I looked at were American. There is a Canadian subsidiary so its possible to find Canadian products but just be cautious!