Why are Consumer Goods like Kleenex and Skippy Peanut Butter Leaving Canada?

Insights with Don Mills and David Campbell- An Acadia Broadcasting Podcast

In recent months a number of food and consumer products companies have announced they are pulling well known products out of Canada including Kleenex, Skippy peanut butter, Delissio, Stouffer's and Lean Cuisine. In addition, there have been shortages of baby formula and cough medicine among other important products. This is leading to less competition for your grocery and consumer product spending. How will the reduction in competition across Canada impact us in Atlantic Canada? Households in this region already spends a higher share of income on groceries and inflation on food purchased from stores has been higher in this region than the rest of the country in recent years.

To talk about this, we are joined this week by Michael Graydon, CEO of Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada, a 40-employee trade association representing most of the food and consumer product manufacturers in Canada. Michael provides an excellent overview of why companies are pulling out of Canada and offers some compelling solutions. One place to start is regulation. There are over 140,000 different regulations facing companies doing business in Canada. Some are important, others not so much. He also thinks part of the solution would be to attract more manufacturing investment to Canada but right now jurisdictions in the United States are offering far more lucrative tax incentives to woo that investment. This is an important issue and all Canadians should be paying close attention.