ETOBICOKE, ON – Despite individual stores receiving fines for mislabelling some foods as Canadian, Loblaws head office remains confident that Canadian shoppers will not notice their new policy of labelling coconuts, pineapples, and imported Dutch gouda as domestic products.
While the Canadian Food Inspection Agency says it’s handed out $47,000 in fines since last April over “misleading” Product of Canada labels, Loblaws VP of Business Operations Martin Vermeer is confident that Canadian shoppers are “too dumb to notice”.
“Sure, the consumer units that shop in our stores were all worked up last year about that whole ‘elbows up, buy Canadian’ thing, which was great for our business model of offloading expired President’s Choice yogurt,” explains Vermeer. “But now we’re pretty sure they’ve stopped paying attention to that, so now they won’t noticed when we label imported prosciutto, or Indian mangoes as ‘Canadian’.”
Vermeer further outlined the corporate strategy: “One trick we use is to put out a decoy box of strawberries with a big ‘Made In USA’ sign, which gets all of the customers riled up and angry to shop harder for Canadian products. Then, after a week, we take the rotten strawberries off the shelf, mush them into paste and combine them with local wood pulp, and sell it as ‘Canadian-made PC Brand strawberry jam’, which technically isn’t even lying.”
Along with Loblaws’ “100 Precent Canadian Bread Price Fixing”, the stores have taken to promoting other “locally-sourced” foods, such as Canadian papayas, Canadian swordfish steaks, and Canadian imported Japanese Kobe beef.
Reached for comment, Loblaws CEO Galen Weston Jr. responded “Wait, the rabble can still afford groceries? Raise the prices, immediately!”
