Some grocery stores carry tens of thousands of sku’s; at some point, errors happen. Errors abt customer safety are atop each retailer’s priority list. Behind that- errors that cause a whiff of deception; and could damage a banner’s reputation. This article mentions a $10k penalty for ‘Made In Canada’ signage errors; but the fine isn’t really the significant cost; the big ‘cost’ is a loss of customer trust, investor faith. https://www.cp24.com/local/toronto/2026/03/20/2-grocery-stores-in-ontario-fined-10k-each-for-mislabelling-some-food-items-as-canadian/
Marketers & retail management staff must reign in any impulse to slap on a not-quite-accurate sign, b/c small missteps cost brand equity. If misinformation here came from a specific (unnamed produce) supplier who inaccurately portrayed an item’s ‘Made In Canada’ status, their (behind-closed doors) ‘penalty’ cd be loss of a big customer. If the error traces to careless decisions by retail staff, new store training is evidently needed.
Usually the big loss of trust is with the customer facing entity; this article names Fortinos & Real Canadian Superstore, but what’s unusual is that a diligent reporter, Alex Arsenych, names names beyond these 2 customer-facing entities (banners), also mentioning ‘the L Word’- Loblaws, the banners’ owner/supplier.
Marketers Take Note: If you expect to be anonymous/safe from controversy that’s a direct/ indirect outcome of your decisions, beware! Diligent reporters can ‘out’ you. And what if Head Office Marketing doesn’t ‘technically’ commit a sin, just their agency partners’? No dice. You own your agencies work. In 2018, Aeroplan & CBC Radio hired a Montreal-based agency for attitude segmentation research; the firm (whose name rhymes with ‘Slop’) surveyed the public with Degree of Agreement statements smacking of bigotry, misogyny. Anyone recall the name of that research agency? Nope? But Aeroplan & CBC Radio brands wore the transgression for years online. Those brands forced to take a painful equity hit each time a new customer googled eg ‘Aeroplan Survey Offends’
-for those seeking schadenfreude, though CBC took it down, for now, you can still read about it here: https://news.mcmaster.ca/aeroplans-troublesome-purity-of-the-country-survey-is-nothing-new/