Montreal duo launch tools to help Canadians support local amid Trump tariff threats

Amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats, many Canadians are choosing to support local businesses and buy more Canadian-made products instead of U.S. ones.

While shopping, it can sometimes be difficult to tell if a product is Canadian. That’s why two Montrealers—Christopher Dip and Alexandre Hamila—developed tools to help Canadians make informed purchasing decisions amid growing trade tensions.

“With the recent tariff announcement, I think people have realized how important it is to help their local businesses and to support the Canadian economy. We’re very reliant on America. And these recent announcements that go against Canada have really brought a new sentiment. And people are looking for solutions to buy more Canadian to support the economy. And we’re just here to amplify that,” said Hamila.

On Feb. 1, around the time the tariffs were supposed to be announced or implemented, Dip was at the family dinner table when his cousin expressed concern about the next four years and how uncertain the future would be.

On Hamila’s side, he said he saw a lot of different lists of products being shared on social media, some of which were outright wrong.

As two tech engineers and founders, they came up with the idea of how they could help Canadians shop more locally, and that’s where the idea of a website came about.

After brainstorming, they launched the website buybeaver.ca, which allows users to check if a product is Canadian by simply scanning the product’s barcode. The project took just two days to publish.

“The first week we had 35,000 unique visitors on our website, and once we launched the app on iPhones only for now, 65,000 downloads. So the response has been amazing,” said Dip.

Many of those users sent them messages suggesting it would be more practical to have a mobile app where they could go into stores and scan items directly to see if they’re Canadian.

Their response was that, after coding for a couple of days, they launched the Buy Beaver app on the App Store just a week later, which also allows users to scan products directly from their phones.

“You take out your phone, you go on Buy Beaver, you open up the app, you scan a product — the barcode of the product — and it will pop up a score out of five and tell you if it’s considered Canadian or not,” Hamila explained.

“Our app is completely free to use. We’re just here to help Canadians.”

The app features a growing database of more than 100,000 products across various categories.

Each product is evaluated based on three key factors: its manufacturing location, the sourcing of its materials and ingredients, and whether the company is proudly Canadian.

They say that the app combines community reviews with advanced artificial intelligence analysis to ensure that ratings remain accurate, transparent, and constantly updated.

“Initially our premise was using to crowdsource the information to rate different products on how Canadian it is. There are good and bad sides about that. So part of what we do now is for the brand ownership, we have an AI that goes scrape the websites for company information, Wikipedia, and then uses those to give you an idea of the company history. So if it’s ultimately owned by a U.S. corporation or let’s say a France owned corporation,” said Dip.

The duo says that, for now, their app is based on user contribution.

“We rely on people to give out the information they have on different products. So we really want people to come into our app and rate products on which they have information. And we’re also opening a brand portal in a couple of days so that brands can come in and sign up for free and give out the information they have on the products they sell so we can get the most truthful information out there,” said Hamila.

They’re a fully self-funded project that relies on donations.

“300 people have donated money to us to keep paying for the server costs, and we’re really, really appreciative of everything,” expressed Dip.

They also emphasized the importance of their app, and buying local.

Dip explained that “it’s not easy to always get transparent brand information. We have an example where a certain brand says that it’s family owned in the Canadian business, which is true. It’s, I mean, incorporated in Canada, but it’s ultimately owned by a U.S. corporation and it’s family owned. So in that case, it’s a bit misleading because you would think it’s Canadian owned, but it’s not. So in those instances, it’s better to use our app so that we give you accurate information on that.”

“It’s to support local businesses. That’s the main goal. It’s also to put pressure, let’s say, on the American neighbors that if you are going to threaten us with tariffs, we have ways of uniting and fighting back,” said Dip.