Tools and Skills for Identifying Canadian Companies

Trump tariffs have us trying to buy more Canadian. But how do we really do that? Corporate ownership is a murky world.....

On Sunday, President Trump announced that he would be imposing a 25% “duty” on Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum. This was after initially announcing a 30 day reprieve from tariffs.

In response to all of this tariffs and duty talk, there’s been a push to “buy Canadian”, or at least not American.

(Personally, I prefer an “avoid American” policy because buying Canadian is protectionist, which is precisely what Trump’s tariffs are as well. But honestly, let’s all just do what we can here. And there will certainly be stuff that we can’t stop buying, and that’s okay too. And for my American readers and friends: this is difficult times, and we’re all just doing the best we can in a tough and unfair circumstance. I look forward to re-engaging with US businesses when all this is over, and I hope that’s soon.)

I’ve seen a lot of “Canadian” companies touted as good options. For instance, I saw one social media post suggesting people buy from MEC. Yes, MEC used to be a Canadian co-op, but it’s now Mountain Equipment Company, and is owned by a US investment fund. So how do you know what companies are Canadian and which ones aren’t? Here are a few tools to help you figure it out:

1. Basic web search. (Don’t use Google). Google has been enshitified recently, so you won’t get good results. I suggest using a search engine like Duck Duck Go. You can simply type in the name of the company and ownership and see if there are any news articles about it. If that doesn’t work, you have to get into more detail.

2. Public or private? You will need to determine if the company is publicly or privately held. If the company is a publicly traded company, then ownership is disclosed. You can use tools like Yahoo Finance to determine ownership. If it’s traded on the US or Canadian stock markets, it’s a public company. For instance, if we use Yahoo Finance to determine Shopify ownership, we learn that almost 72% of shares are held by institutional investors (like banks, pension funds, etc).

3. Corporate records. Many companies disclose ownership in their corporate records / statements. You can also look in corporate databases. In Canada, companies can be registered either federally or provincially. For instance, Shopify is registered federally. You can access their info using this link: https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/corporations-canada/en and searching for Shopify. There, we learn that their registered address is in Ottawa on O’Connor Street. You can also order copies of corporate documents, revealing more details. (Some examples that I’ve done for this newsletter are here.) For a company that isn’t publicly traded, this is where you can find ownership. For instance, if you search for my company (Insight Threat Intelligence), you’ll find out that I’m the sole director of the corporation. In Ontario, you can find similar information, but it’ll cost you a bit of money to order the documents. Perhaps a subreddit would be a great place to start compiling this information so we don’t all do these searches? The actual searchability of these provincial registries varies by province, so it’s a bit hit or miss. (This is part of the discussion around beneficial ownership and illicit finance that I’ve been banging on about for years!)

4. Identifying the name. In some cases, the operating name is different from the registered (legal) name of the company. You’ll often see a company “operating as”. You can usually find the legal name of the company in corporate documents. If that’s not an option, you can also email the company and see if they’ll tell you. If they’re super dodgy about it, that’s interesting…..and you should message me about that. For instance, I searched for my local coffee shop in the Ontario registry, and found out that the cafe was registered by a numbered federal company, so I searched that company in the federal database and found the ultimate owner, and their home address since that’s the registered address for the business.)

In some cases, you’ll have to make your own determination of what constitutes a Canadian company. Is a company owned primarily by Canadians “Canadian”? Is it enough for it to be domiciled in Canada? There’s honestly a bit of a judgement call around some of this stuff, but hopefully these tools can get you started in equipping yourself with knowledge. Don’t just assume that a company that markets itself as Canadian actually is.

It’s also worth considering how your money gets used and what your end goal in a “Buy Canada” action is. In the case of Mountain Equipment Company, it almost exclusively (or exclusively?) operates in Canada, employing Canadians, but profits go to a US investment fund. Is that Canadian? Boycotting it would impact Canadians and their jobs, but profits are not kept here in Canada. This is where judgement calls have to be made.

Anyway, this is quick and dirty. There’s plenty more to learn about this stuff (I teach entire courses on this!) but this should be enough to get folks started to understand what is, and what is not, a Canadian company.

Happy hunting, and be sure to let me know if you find anything surprising!

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