TORONTO — If you catch Sasha Ivanov at the supermarket these days, chances are he'll be snapping a photo of something on the store's shelves.
His new app, Maple Scan, helps shoppers identify Canadian products by analyzing photographs of products to provide details about where they were made and whether they meet the government criteria for being labelled "product of Canada" or "made in Canada."
When the app detects a product from outside the country, it offers users a list of homegrown alternatives.
"Right now, when I go to the grocery store, ultimately, I don't really know what is Canadian or not or even any information about the company and their backgrounds," the Calgary-based computer science researcher said about the app's inspiration.
"The question of what makes the product Canadian is actually kind of challenging and that's what I was hoping to solve with this."
The app he created joins a growing group of services that have cropped up in a matter of weeks with one goal: helping people support homegrown brands.
The impetus behind most of them was the souring relations between Canada and the U.S., which has been threatening to impose massive tariffs.
Under U.S. President Donald Trump's current plans, all Canadian goods will face 25 per cent duties starting next month, while energy will also see a 10 per cent tariff. Around the same time, steel and aluminum originating from anywhere outside the U.S. will also rack up 25 per cent tariffs.
Outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to retaliate, but many Canadians aren't waiting for certainty before making changes. Instead, they're eschewing American goods in favour of domestic alternatives starting now.
But figuring out what's Canadian is both difficult and "nuanced," said Christopher Dip, who co-founded the Montreal-based Buy Beaver app with Alexandre Hamila.
Some products, for example, are made in Canada but with ingredients from other countries. Other items were made by Canadian companies outside the country and many were produced by foreign-headquartered multinationals in Canada.
As Dip and Hamila have learned, where something is made isn't always clear from the packaging and who owns the company can change without the average shopper really noticing.
One example they stumbled across is Kicking Horse Coffee. The brand got its start in Invermere, B.C., but in 2017, Italian coffee giant Lavazza took an 80 per cent stake in the brand.
The Buy Beaver app aims to help shoppers sort through such confusion by relying on crowdsourcing. Scanning an item's barcode through their app produces three ratings — one each for the company's manufacturing location, materials and ingredients, and brand ownership.
The higher each score is, the more users there are who voted on it being Canadian.
"We know there are some errors but most of the time, it's going to be right," Dip said.
Maple Scan, which leverages artificial intelligence to infer and synthesize information about products, is also imperfect.
While the app got the details of several products right, it told The Canadian Press last week that a bottle of French's ketchup was prepared in Canada, which is true, but by Swiss Chalet- and Harvey's-owner Recipe Unlimited, which is wrong. French's is, in fact, made by U.S.-based McCormick & Company.
Ivanov has since begun working to fix these issues by programming its AI to cross-reference supplementary online sources. He's also mused about boosting the precision again by eventually building a curated database of products and allowing users to vote on the accuracy of each entry.
Because many of the apps came together quickly, some aren't available on all mobile operating systems yet or are contingent on their userbase remaining engaged.
Edmonton software developers William Boytinck and Matthew Suddaby, for example, is relying on crowdsourcing to power their Shop Canadian app.
Users judge how Canadian a product is by doling out up to five maple leaves. An item with five maple leaves must be produced in Canada with all its parts coming from within the country.
Boytinck admits the method has its errors, but said, "the more people use it, the more accurate it gets."
And so far, a lot of people are using it. The app recently crossed the 100,000 downloads mark as of last week.
"Our original goal was just to help a few keep a couple hundred dollars in Canada," he said. "It's a simple idea and we've just exploded."
Ivanov has had a similar experience. Maple Scan had 2,000 downloads last week and the userbase is growing.
Most who have adopted the app are opening it several times a day and scanning everything from grocery store staples to electronics, makeup and even store fronts, he said.
What they're learning may already be shaping their purchasing decisions.
Loblaw Cos. Ltd. CEO Per Bank said Friday that his grocery chains noticed a 7.5 per cent increase in sales of products prepared in Canada after the tariff spat intensified.
That increase reached double digits last week and is particularly pronounced in the dairy and frozen food categories, he wrote on LinkedIn.
While it's unclear if the apps contributed to such sales, Ivanov is just pleased to see people's interest in buying Canadian climbing.
"It's been wonderful and I am just so excited that this is something that people are finding helpful," he said.
— With files from Aaron Sousa in Edmonton.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 19, 2025.
Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
