LEAMINGTON, ON — Local man Kyle Matheson is proud to purchase and use French’s Ketchup knowing that the tomatoes were grown and harvested in Canada by a temporary foreign worker from Jamaica, the Philippines, Mexico or Guatemala.
“I was outraged when I heard that Loblaws was going to stop carrying French’s Ketchup,” said Kyle Matheson, a self-titled ‘Canadian patriot’. “Did these corporate big wigs ever consider the back-breaking, minimum wage jobs before they decided to pull this All-Canadian product from their stores? These people came a long way to work here in the blazing hot sun for 14 hours a day only to be told that the Ketchup will only be sold at Sobey’s?”
Taking things into his own hands, Matheson and a group of other concerned consumers began to petition Loblaws’ headquarters in Toronto to bring back French’s Ketchup. Meanwhile, Twitter erupted with the hashtag #ExploitCdnTFW and Canadians took selfies with exhausted foreign farm labourers from Nicaragua to demonstrate the important work being done at the local level.
“We needed to stand up for the jobs I would never work at,” explained Matheson. “When I eat a hot-dog, I want it covered in Canadian ketchup produced by foreign workers in back-breaking conditions, not American ketchup produced by foreign workers in back-breaking conditions.”
When Loblaws finally relented and returned the ketchup to their shelves, Matheson rejoiced that his beloved tomatoes were back in bottles being sold by French’s, a US-based corporation.
