Kraft Heinz is calling out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after he claimed the company didn’t use Canadian tomatoes in their ketchup while discussing retaliatory measures in response to looming 25% trade tariffs.
Following a meeting with premiers earlier this week, Trudeau suggested Canadians buy alternatives to Heinz Ketchup to avoid paying tariffs that may potentially be applied to the product.
“That’s why we will look, as we have in the past, at things that have replacements for Canadian consumers that wouldn’t be tariffed,” he said. “The example from last time was Heinz’s ketchup being replaced by French’s ketchup because French’s was still using Canadian tomatoes in its ketchup.”
Trudeau was referring to retaliatory tariffs that could be implemented in response to U.S. President Trump’s pledge to impose a 25% tariff on all Canadian imports as early as Feb. 1.
Kraft Heinz Canada responded to the prime minister’s comments on Thursday by saying it was “deeply disappointed” by Trudeau’s “misleading statements” regarding its product.
While Kraft Heinz Canada did shut down a hundred-year-old tomato processing plant that had been operating out of Leamington, Ont. in 2015, the company returned to producing ketchup in Canada five years later in response to consumer backlash.
“With the exception of the five years from 2015 to 2020, we have made HEINZ Ketchup in Canada for more than 100 years. We were resolute in our decision to bring the production of HEINZ Ketchup back to Canada in 2020 and are proud that HEINZ Ketchup is made in Canada, by Canadians, using Canadian tomatoes,” wrote the company in a statement.
The company noted that the Montreal plant opened in 2020 still used tomatoes grown in Leamington.
“More than 1,000 hard-working Canadians at our Mont Royal Quebec facility, together with our many suppliers in the Province, produce HEINZ Ketchup for Canadians using tomatoes grown in Leamington, Ontario. As one of the largest manufacturers of food in the country, Kraft Heinz is also the largest purchaser of tomatoes in Ontario.”
An X user pointed out that not only is the Heinz Ketchup processing plant located in Canada, but it’s also about 10 minutes away from Trudeau’s constituency office.
