There's a New Tariff In Town: How To Leverage National Buy-Canadian Movement for Yourself
“Canada should be the 51st state”.
It was like a cannon shot across the bow of a wartime ship.
Perhaps more than any other thing, this one phrase has already defined in a historical way what it means to be Canadian in 2025.
10 short syllables that seem to echo into eternity, and every time this phrase that tastes like metal in the mouth has been used, it has rallied even more Canadians to rise around our great flag and proudly champion what it means to be Canadian.
It means loving maple syrup and poutine. It means helping a neighbour out of a rut in the winter. It means grabbing a Double-Double on your way to the rink for a quick game.
But is that all it means to be Canadian? Can our national identity really be boiled down to Timbits and Toonies?
Not by a long shot! And while it might at surface level seem daunting to create an elevator pitch for our collective nationalism, there are a few hundred things that come to mind immediately.
For starters, yeah. We like poutine. It’s fries and cheese with gravy on top. What's not to love? And for that matter, while we’re certainly proud of our creation, why the heck did that take so long to come into existence?
And the answer is quite simple. It took so long for something that simple to come into existence because it took awhile for Canada to get here.
And sure, maybe we Canadians should have gotten here earlier, but once we did show up, stuff started to get really good really quickly.
Things like football. Yeah. We did that.
Or Insulin. You’re welcome.
Or peanut butter, walkie talkies, wonderbra, basketball, garbage bags, trivial pursuit, superman, paint rollers, the egg carton, the canadarm, those lines on the road, the electric wheelchair and standard time.
In 1871, Canadian railroad engineer Sandford Fleming brought the idea of time zones to the US and Canada and standard time was created.
And all these absolute mic drops can be summed up into one baller statement.
Our young nation may be new on the scene and the little brother to the biggest superpower on planet earth, but not even that superpower would have the same modern world or quality of life without Canada.
I hope you’re feeling a bit patriotic right now, and well you should because our collective impact on the world's stage has already been tremendous, and we’re only 150 years in.
But one thing we’ve been absolutely crap at doing is taking credit for our work.
Call it humility, call it the Canadian mentality, call it what you will but we just don't like to brag about the truly cool things we’re up here doing everyday.
We’re a nation of dreamers and those dreamers are doers. We’re a nation of thinkers and those thoughts are then studiously written down so they can be peer-reviewed.
We’re a nation of disruptors and industry shakers, and while we’re busy changing the landscape of whatever we’re focused on, from a place of genuine modesty we’ll deliver a heart-felt “just gonna scooch by ya' here” while we bend time to pass you on our way to the finish line.
This shy nature is who we are at our core, but whether or not we like it, we’re going to have to evolve one more time.
We need to speak up. We need to stop being so reticent and say the thing that we’re reluctant to say.
This message is for all Canadians but I want to focus on one particular group of Canadians.
Small Business Owners.
Why aren’t you speaking up? Why aren’t you taking the opportunity to loudly and proudly champion your Canadian business, your Canadian products, and your Canadian Pride?
Why aren’t you your own biggest advocate on social media? It’s literally a FREE broadcasting platform that will reach your local community and it will 100% help them understand your business much better …. It’ll even convince new people to come shop with you!
And trust me, we could all use a little more business, but the more important part is this … nobody is out here shopping U.S. products because they WANT to … they just don't know where else they can get the thing that they need, and they for sure don’t know that you actually have it available for them right now.
And why don’t they know this? Because we’re shy! We’re quiet, we’re demure, thanks to our largely conservative roots we’ve all been taught to behave this way and this thing above all others has got to change and it’s got to change quickly.
And if you're in Regina or the surrounding area my video and photo production business can help you do that!
Was that a bit of a plug for my businesses? You bet! But that’s kind of the point, honestly. We need to speak up!
I can help you do that because this is a video production company, but regardless of you being a patron of my 100% Canadian business, we all have to speak up!
Being Canadian is about quite a lot more than Tim Hortons and Terry Fox.
It’s about being authentically you, and making sure that person is the best version of you that could exist today, and every day.
In today's world of ever increasing voices all adding to the chattering clamour that exists in our collective consciousness the one voice that the world needs right now is the true and unified voice of Canada.
You ARE that voice. You HAVE that voice. And it's time for you to USE it.
We need to evolve. The world needs us to evolve. We all need to start talking.
Not sure where to start with your business? Reach out. We can probably help ya' figure it out, eh?
Written By: Daniel J Schmidt
Written For: The Really Good Content Company