Calgary-made app encourages ‘Buy Local’ as businesses brace for trade war impact

As the trade war ramps up, the tariffs and countermeasures are renewing the push for Canadians to purchase from local businesses.

Calgarians are being urged to support local businesses as the trade war between Canada and the United States arrives—and some hope to make that choice easier.

A locally made app allows customers to search products or scan barcodes to find out their origin and whether any Canadian alternatives are available.

O SCANada has garnered more than 60,000 downloads on iPhones over the last month and launched on Android devices on Tuesday.

“You can take a product, scan the barcode and then that will do a lookup for you that returns an AI-generated response that’s really searching the internet and giving you details about that product,” said Ryan Checora, who co-founded the app with his mother.

“I think it’s a new movement now that people are becoming just more aware that, as a nation, we have a responsibility to ourselves and we do want to protect what we have as Canadians.”

Buying local is something Bow River Brewing is hoping Calgarians choose, too.

The brewery uses tall cans, which are made from raw Canadian aluminum that is shipped to the U.S. to be turned into the taller 473 millilitre size.

“It’s going to mean that beer costs more, because we can’t afford to absorb those additional costs if we’re hit with them,” said Ian Binmore, an owner and operator of the brewery.

The taller cans are only produced in the U.S., Binmore said.

The family-run business is urging people to come in to fill up with Canadian-made glass growlers instead.

“If you bring in a growler and get a refill, you’re taking the aluminum cans completely out of the equation. So we’re hoping that a lot of Canadians realize that they can completely bypass the tariff thing by buying local from Canadian-owned, Calgary-owned businesses that are using Canadian grain, Alberta grain,” Binmore said.

The uncertainty leading up to the implementation of tariffs on Tuesday was enough to impact many small businesses, according to Shawn Freeman.

As the president of the Entrepreneurs' Organization of Calgary, Freeman said there are so many unanswered questions about what the trade war will mean for different industries.

“I think for entrepreneurs in Calgary, it’s just a bit more uncertainty,” Freeman said.

“We’ve gone through a lot over the last decade and I think we’ve learned to roll with the punches. Obviously, there’s going to be businesses that are impacted more than others, and another opportunity to band together and help each other out.”