The CANADA Score, Explained: How We Measure What’s Truly Canadian
May 19, 2025 | Last Updated Aug 9, 2025
Why We Created CANADA Scores
“Made in Canada” doesn’t always mean what you think it means.
Walk through your local grocery store or hardware aisle and you’ll see maple leaves everywhere—on packaging, in brand names, sometimes even as part of the logo itself. And yet, behind that patriotic veneer, many of these products are manufactured overseas, owned by foreign conglomerates, or contain mostly imported ingredients. The disconnect between branding and reality isn’t just confusing—it undermines the power of consumers to support the Canadian economy intentionally.
That’s why we created the CANADA Score.
It’s a single, easy-to-understand number from 1 to 10 that estimates how much the purchase of a product—or the company behind it—actually contributes to Canada’s economy. It was born out of a simple idea: if we’re going to vote with our dollars, we should be able to see the ballot clearly.
What the CANADA Score Measures
A CANADA Score isn’t just about where something is made. It’s a holistic reflection of a product’s economic connection to Canada. Our system uses publicly available information, company disclosures, regulatory databases, and AI-assisted synthesis to rate products based on four key criteria:
- Ownership: Is the parent company Canadian? Do the profits stay in Canada or get funneled back to a foreign headquarters?
- Manufacturing: Is the product actually made, assembled, or packaged in Canada? Are Canadian workers involved in production?
- Sourcing: Are the raw materials, ingredients, or components sourced domestically? Or are they imported and merely reassembled?
- Employment & Presence: Does the company employ Canadians meaningfully? Does it have a physical presence here, or is its involvement limited to distribution?
The result is a score that offers far more nuance than a “Made in Canada” label ever could.
What the Scores Mean: A Breakdown
We use a simple 10-point scale—but there’s a lot packed into each number. Here's what each tier generally represents:
10/10 – 100% Canadian: owned, made, and sourced here.
9/10 – Canadian-owned, predominantly made/sourced here, or a large independent retail footprint.
8/10 – Canadian-owned, some materials sourced/manufactured here, or some independent retail footprint.
7/10 – Canadian-owned, but manufacturing/sourcing is largely outsourced.
6/10 – Foreign-owned, but made in Canada, or with large independent retail footprint.
5/10 – Foreign-owned, substantive Canadian manufacturing/sourcing or substantive retail footprint.
4/10 – Foreign-owned, some Canadian manufacturing/sourcing or independent retail footprint.
3/10 – Foreign-owned, on store shelves, some local production (e.g. co-packing), contribution is modest.
2/10 – Foreign-owned, on store shelves, but made abroad, and imported.
1/10 – Foreign-owned, available online, but zero meaningful Canadian economic involvement.
Note regarding foreign franchises: After being scored on the above scale, franchises with a foreign-owned parent will generally have 2-points subtracted from their score: 1 point because of the ~10-20% of sales that is sent back to the parent company as franchise-related fees, and 1 point for the loss of sovereignty over menus, sourcing, manufacturing and/or logistics decisions.
Some may wonder how a small, self-run Canadian business could score as highly—or even higher—than a large multinational corporation with an extensive manufacturing and distribution network. The answer lies in our unit-based approach: our scores reflect the estimated contribution of a single unit sold to the Canadian economy. We are not evaluating total economic impact, but rather relative impact per purchase. This framing better reflects the reality that choosing one product usually means not choosing another. In our view, per-unit contribution is the more meaningful lens for guiding individual purchasing decisions.
Why This Score Matters
We built the CANADA Score because labels are difficult to trust. A product can technically be “Made in Canada” and still provide minimal benefit to Canadian workers or communities. It might be foreign-owned. It might be assembled here with fully imported components. It might employ a skeleton crew in a distribution centre and little else.
The CANADA Score pushes past the legal technicalities and looks at the real story behind the product.
This matters because every purchase is a choice with consequences. Choosing high-scoring products:
- Keeps profits in Canada, where they can be reinvested into local innovation and growth
- Supports local employment, especially in manufacturing, farming, and logistics
- Strengthens our supply chains, reducing dependency on foreign production
- Encourages honest branding, rewarding companies that walk the talk
While still just an approximation of each product’s/brand’s contribution, the score is intended to help break down the complexity into a single, actionable, easy-to-understand metric that consumers can trust.
How to Use the Score
The goal is for the CANADA Scores to help make shopping Canadian a little easier. You don’t need to research every label or trace every ingredient—we’ve done the legwork so you don’t have to.
- Sort or filter by score when browsing our database to prioritize the most impactful products
- Compare competing brands side-by-side to see which one actually supports the Canadian economy
- Look past the packaging—especially when a maple leaf or “Canada” in the name isn’t backed by real numbers
- Share with friends and family, especially those trying to be more intentional with their purchases
Evolving the Score: What’s Next
The CANADA Score isn’t static. It’s based on evolving data—and so it will evolve too.
We regularly update entries based on:
- New company disclosures
- Facility openings or closures
- Ownership changes (e.g. Canadian company acquired by a foreign parent)
- User submissions and corrections
We’re also continuing to improve how we gather and synthesize the public data sources that we rely on, and how we weigh different factors—especially in edge cases where Canadian and foreign contributions are more blended. The list is currently in a beta release, which means that some errors should be expected.
Over time, we hope to make the score even more transparent, and even more trustworthy. And as always, we welcome feedback—if you’ve got new information or see something that needs correcting, just let us know.
The Goal Isn’t Perfection: Everyone Should Simply Do What They Can
You don’t necessarily need to buy a product with a 9 or 10 score every time – in some categories the highest score possible may be a 3; in other categories the Canadian alternative may simply be priced outside your means. That’s okay.
The goal here isn’t perfection, and this isn’t a competition. It’s just about doing whatever is within our means to help contribute back to the country.
If you’re someone who can purchase 9s and 10s all the time – great. If you’re someone who decides to only swap a few selected products, that helps too. Regardless, hopefully The CANADA List can make your job a little easier.
A few other posts you may be interested in: