Western Standard - This Canadian business is BEING HIT from both sides ｜ MARTY UP NORTH

00:00:00.000 So the tariffs continue to escalate.

00:00:03.780 And the more I think about this, like, who's losing?

00:00:10.740 It's not the government.

00:00:12.440 It's not Carney.

00:00:13.500 It's not Trump.

00:00:14.540 It's the person on the ground.

00:00:16.880 It's you and me.

00:00:18.400 And so brings us to the story I want to share.

00:00:21.740 Just a quick story, right?

00:00:23.300 So we're in this trade war right now, and everybody's saying,

00:00:26.680 Buy Canadian, buy Canadian, buy Canadian.

00:00:28.480 So I ran around my house trying to find a made-in-Canada product, okay?

00:00:34.300 And I found one.

00:00:36.000 Bear with me.

00:00:37.600 So I'm not promoting this, but this is something called the Gutter Saver Pro, okay?

00:00:45.840 And it's just, it's something I have.

00:00:47.580 I hate cleaning my gutters.

00:00:49.180 And you know when you're cleaning your gutters and you lean the ladder against the gutters,

00:00:52.380 you're kind of bending the gutters?

00:00:54.240 Well, you put this on top.

00:00:56.020 You put your broom handle there.

00:00:58.080 you jack it up in the air you hang it over your gutters then you lean your your um your ladder on

00:01:03.340 here but anyways that's beside the point it's not the item that counts it's the fact that

00:01:07.080 we can't zoom the camera but right here written on here trust me it says proudly made in canada

00:01:13.720 by lnd tool and die okay so i got a hold of the people who own this company lovely lady named

00:01:23.400 Lucy I won't give her last name and I talked to Lucy on the phone yesterday about the impacts of

00:01:30.360 a tariff and I thought I was pretty smart on tariffs and and Lucy gave me a really amazing

00:01:37.620 lesson and maybe I'll bring her on the show in the coming days or coming weeks or something like that

00:01:42.180 but she so they're in Nova Scotia they they have a patent for this thing they had to source somebody

00:01:50.560 to make a mold making a mold is not easy anymore nobody makes molds it's not like you just show up

00:01:55.720 and get somebody to make a mold they got somebody to make the mold and found somebody who still had

00:01:59.900 the technology to inject this thing and so they they make the this this this object this this

00:02:06.100 thing and um 90 of their market is in the u.s okay and that's just the reality in canada so

00:02:16.500 she's a small business in Canada she's got a product and her product sells okay in Canada but 0.65

00:02:22.800 the market is small and plus people don't clean their gutters in this country for call it uh seven

00:02:30.080 months out of the year eight months nine months out of the year so you know you buy one of these

00:02:34.660 and it's okay but if but in the U.S. there's places that have a year-round need for these things and

00:02:40.840 she sells 90% of her product in the US. Well, the tariffs have demolished her business because 1.00

00:02:47.840 I don't want to get into it too, too much. But the 50% tariff that the US imposed on her means 1.00

00:02:56.920 that her supplier, let's call it, let's say Home Depot USA used to buy a thousand of these from

00:03:03.340 her every month. Now Home Depot has to pay 50% more for these things. Home Depot is not willing

00:03:11.500 to order them in advance and pay 50% and risk being stuck with the stock. So now Home Depot

00:03:18.220 will say, well, maybe I'll do 10 or 20 or something like that. And then it becomes

00:03:21.600 unprofitable. Then I asked her if she could find her own distributor in the US. She's like,

00:03:26.260 if I do, I lose control. Can you find, actually, before I get on tariffs, so the Americans are 0.55

00:03:31.620 tariffing her and Canada's tariffing her because some of the components that she uses to make this

00:03:38.060 come from the US the resin or the coloring or the sticky labels or whatever not everything is

00:03:43.160 sourced in Canada so now she's getting so the cost to make her product is going up and then and then

00:03:49.420 the cost of because the cost of her product goes up when the invoice she sends to the US is higher

00:03:54.560 and the US are putting an invoice a 50% invoice on there she's out of business okay in a nutshell

00:03:59.940 She's like, I don't, I was, I was upset talking to her and I don't even know how you can, like the frustration in her voice was incredible.

00:04:10.280 And, and this is Canada where already in Canada, being an entrepreneur and a small business owner is already difficult enough.

00:04:18.280 Like this is not a country that is friendly to entrepreneurs.

00:04:22.200 You know, she gave me horror stories.

00:04:24.080 i won't go into the horror stories um but but i just i just wanted to make that make people

00:04:31.180 understand that the these things are impacting lives so it's her livelihood that's affected

00:04:36.240 and it's uh and it's the people that she hires and the machinists and the injection molders and so

00:04:42.340 forth so there's a cascading event there but there's also another cascading event which is

00:04:47.260 she sells to the US and she explained this brilliantly. She's selling to the US and then

00:04:54.600 therefore she's bringing in American money to Canada, right? So if she sells one of these and

00:04:59.240 she brings in 10 US dollars to Canada, that's $10 that Canada did not have before. And then with

00:05:05.860 that $10, she can go to her neighbor who sells chickens or makes picnic tables or sews clothes 0.73

00:05:11.020 or washes windows, whatever, and use some of that money. But now she's out of money. She's not

00:05:16.800 bringing in the dollars. She's laying off people and it's having a cascading spill on effect to 1.00

00:05:23.980 others in her community. And then I said, well, I heard that Carney is offering assistance to

00:05:30.440 businesses, right? That Carney said he's going to take the money he collects as tariffs and use it

00:05:34.780 to offset some of the hurt of these businesses. And she laughed. And as soon as I asked the

00:05:40.800 question and she was laughing, I was almost apologetic going, I'm sorry I even asked that

00:05:45.380 question. What a silly question on my part to ask. How does a small business like hers take

00:05:51.080 advantage of the relief offered by the federal government, right? The relief offered by the 1.00

00:05:58.100 quote unquote relief offered by the federal government, that's for Bombardier. That's for

00:06:03.060 Virgin Mobile or TELUS or whatever, the big companies that have big departments that can

00:06:09.260 apply for this it would cost her so much money just to apply to get this assistance that it's

00:06:16.560 hardly worth it and the assistance is a pittance and then she explained some of the assistance and 0.96

00:06:21.000 the assistance would be basically to help her you know build a website so she could attract

00:06:26.940 more business in Canada and she's like I've been doing this for 15 years do you not think

00:06:30.900 I've already done that I'm like I get it get it get it

00:06:39.260 For more information, visit www.fema.org

Western Standard - September 14, 2026

This Canadian business is BEING HIT from both sides ｜ MARTY UP NORTH

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