Canada's largest private sector union is launching a national social media campaign to urge consumers to support Canadian jobs by buying products and services made in Canada.
Unifor national president Jerry Dias says the "I Shop Canada" campaign is its response to an "escalating trade war with the United States."
The campaign urges consumers, workers and companies to share information and images about made-in-Canada goods and services on Twitter using the #IShopCanada hashtag and @IShopCA tag and on Facebook, where an I Shop Canada frame for profile pictures is also available.
Dias says consumers will gladly support Canadian brands and services if they are aware of them.
The launch comes just before Canada Day, when Ottawa intends to implement retaliatory tariffs on $16.6 billion worth of American products to counter U.S. tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imposed as of June 1.
An online poll conducted by Abacus Data in the first week of June found that more than half of 2,200 Canadians surveyed said they intend to avoid buying U.S. wines and cross-border shopping.
The polling industry's professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error as they are not a random sample and therefore are not necessarily representative of the whole population.
